Post by Gil Jesus on Oct 2, 2021 7:48:37 GMT -5
THE JEFFERSON AVE WITNESSES
Warren 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 and questioned 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. The newspaper article claimed that Reynolds was shot because he "fingered Oswald". But 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.
That original story is found in Commission Exhibit 2523, a January 21, 1964 interview where Reynolds told the FBI that " he would hesitate to definitely identify Oswald as the individual" he saw.
This statement was given two days BEFORE he was shot in the head, so he was clear-minded. Before he was shot in the head, he couldn't identify Oswald. After he was shot in the head, he was able to identify Oswald "in his mind" when he saw Oswald's picture in the newspaper and on television. (11 H 435)
Apparently, he didn't see a picture of Oswald in a newspaper or on television between November 22nd and January 21st when he still hesitated "to definitely identify Oswald as the individual".
So for the immediate TWO MONTHS after the assassination, when the biggest crime of the century was still a hot news topic, he never saw Oswald's picture in a newspaper, never saw him on television, even when he was murdered by Jack Ruby? That is so much BS. If Oswald was the man he saw, why didn't he go to the authorities and report it right away? Why did he tell the FBI that he couldn't identify Oswald just two months after the assassination? Why did he wait nine months to identify Oswald in his testimony? Because the man was frightened for himself and his family.
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, even though he knew it wasn't true.
Why would he identify an innocent man? That human instinct of survival.
Oswald was dead and identifying him wasn't going to change anything for Oswald but not identifying him could have dangerous consequences for Reynolds and his family. This was the message he got from all of this and this is what changed his mind. So he identified Oswald "in his mind ".
The man who allegedly pursued the gunman with Reynolds was another employee of the car lot, B.T. "Pat" Patterson. Like Reynolds, he never viewed a live lineup and he never reported seeing Oswald until the time he was interviewed by the FBI on August 26, 1964. Even though Oswald was known around the world just hours after the assassination, it took Patterson ten months to identify him as the man he saw.
And his "positive identification" didn't even involve a photographic lineup, where he should have been shown photographs of different men along with Oswald's and asked to pick the man out. He was shown just two photographs, both of Oswald: Oswald's Dallas PD mugshot and one of the "backyard photographs" with him holding the rifle. (21 H 27-28)
This is what the Commission accepted as a "positive identification": a witness who never came forward and took ten months to identify Oswald and did so from photographs which included no one else and suggested Oswald was guilty.
Patterson told the FBI that "the individual stopped still, ejected the cartridges, reloaded the gun, and then placed the weapon inside his waistband." ( 21 H 27 ) But there's no evidence that the gunman "ejected the cartridges" after having passed the Davis' apartment building. Patterson was a block away from there. How could he see that?
Another witness who took months to come forward was Mary Brock. She and her husband ran the Ballew Texaco Service Station on the 500 block of Jefferson. She was interviewed by the FBI on January 21, 1964 and told them that at approximately 1:30 pm on November 22nd, a white male wearing light clothing came past her at a fast pace. Like Patterson, she identified Oswald after being shown a single photograph, again of his mugshot, this time from New Orleans. (19 H 181)
What's interesting about this interview is that she said that FIVE MINUTES later, two individuals from the Johnny Reynolds car lot came up and inquired about the man she saw. "They informed her that this individual had in all probability shot a Dallas Police officer." First of all, a five minute head start is a long time when you're following someone. At a normal walking pace of 2.5 miles per hour (13,500 ft/hr), that's an 1,100 foot lead. That's nearly 4 football fields. How do you "follow" someone with a lead like that? Even in a car, you're going to lose them. Or maybe there's more to the story.
Reynolds and Patterson were supposed to have heard the shots, seen the gunman fleeing south on Patton, and then followed him as he went west on Jefferson and north on Crawford. How could they know that a police officer had been the victim of the shooting if they hadn't been to the scene of the murder? Supposedly, all they heard was shots. The murder scene was out of their range of vision. Because the evidence indicates that at least one of them had been.
Page 87 of Commission Document 385 is the FBI interview of Harold Russell, another employee of the Johnny Reynolds car lot, conducted on January 21st. In it Russell says that both he AND Pat Patterson "proceeded to the area of Tenth and Patton Ave."
He then implies that Patterson left to go with Warren Reynolds "to follow the individual as he headed west on Jefferson Street". I don't believe that Reynolds followed the gunman right away for the same reason I don't believe Callaway confronted an armed man while being unarmed. I believe that Reynolds watched the gunman and waited for Patterson to return before they both "followed" the path of the gunman as far as Reynolds could see. And I believe that took all of five minutes and was the reason why that they were five minutes behind the gunman getting to the gas station. And the reason why they lost him.
Look at Reynolds' own statement of 1/21/64 to the FBI in which he said that "he last observed the individual to turn north by the Ballew Texaco station and at this point he did not observe the individual." (25 H 731)
And that he had to make an inquiry at the gas station (ibid.), something he would not have had to do if he had followed the gunman and kept him in his sight. And that five minutes or ten minutes later, "an unknown source" told him that the man he had been tailing had shot and killed a uniformed officer of the Dallas Police. (ibid.) How could an unknown person know he was tailing the guy? I believe that unknown source was Pat Patterson.
Getting back to Russell, he also described the man as wearing a light blue jacket and light slacks.
He then stated that although he was an eyewitness who could identify the killer of a fellow police officer, the Dallas Police simply let him walk away while they were searching for Tippit's killer. He said, "he left the officers and then went in a nearby drug store and then went about his business and thought nothing more about it." Really.
These were the nine witnesses for the prosecution: Helen Markham, Scoggins, Callaway, Guinyard, Barbara Davis, Virginia Davis, Reynolds, Patterson and Mary Brock. Witnesses who, on the day of the murder, gave no description of the man they saw. Nine witnesses who either identified Oswald from invalid lineups or identified him from mugshots that implied his guilt. To consider these as "positive identifications" is ridiculous.
These are the types of actions you take when you're trying to influence a witness' identification and frame an innocent man for a crime he did not commit. But there were other witnesses who did not fall for these tactics, witnesses who described a man who clearly was NOT Oswald. Witnesses who refused to identify Oswald as the gunman. Witnesses whose accounts were never published nor were they called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
Because they had nothing to contribute to the "Oswald-did-it" narrative, their accounts were simply ignored and it wasn't until years later their accounts became publicized thanks to the efforts of researchers who tracked them down and made their accounts known. I call these "the defense witnesses."
NEXT WEEKEND: THE DEFENSE WITNESSES
Warren 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 and questioned 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. The newspaper article claimed that Reynolds was shot because he "fingered Oswald". But 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.
That original story is found in Commission Exhibit 2523, a January 21, 1964 interview where Reynolds told the FBI that " he would hesitate to definitely identify Oswald as the individual" he saw.
This statement was given two days BEFORE he was shot in the head, so he was clear-minded. Before he was shot in the head, he couldn't identify Oswald. After he was shot in the head, he was able to identify Oswald "in his mind" when he saw Oswald's picture in the newspaper and on television. (11 H 435)
Apparently, he didn't see a picture of Oswald in a newspaper or on television between November 22nd and January 21st when he still hesitated "to definitely identify Oswald as the individual".
So for the immediate TWO MONTHS after the assassination, when the biggest crime of the century was still a hot news topic, he never saw Oswald's picture in a newspaper, never saw him on television, even when he was murdered by Jack Ruby? That is so much BS. If Oswald was the man he saw, why didn't he go to the authorities and report it right away? Why did he tell the FBI that he couldn't identify Oswald just two months after the assassination? Why did he wait nine months to identify Oswald in his testimony? Because the man was frightened for himself and his family.
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, even though he knew it wasn't true.
Why would he identify an innocent man? That human instinct of survival.
Oswald was dead and identifying him wasn't going to change anything for Oswald but not identifying him could have dangerous consequences for Reynolds and his family. This was the message he got from all of this and this is what changed his mind. So he identified Oswald "in his mind ".
The man who allegedly pursued the gunman with Reynolds was another employee of the car lot, B.T. "Pat" Patterson. Like Reynolds, he never viewed a live lineup and he never reported seeing Oswald until the time he was interviewed by the FBI on August 26, 1964. Even though Oswald was known around the world just hours after the assassination, it took Patterson ten months to identify him as the man he saw.
And his "positive identification" didn't even involve a photographic lineup, where he should have been shown photographs of different men along with Oswald's and asked to pick the man out. He was shown just two photographs, both of Oswald: Oswald's Dallas PD mugshot and one of the "backyard photographs" with him holding the rifle. (21 H 27-28)
This is what the Commission accepted as a "positive identification": a witness who never came forward and took ten months to identify Oswald and did so from photographs which included no one else and suggested Oswald was guilty.
Patterson told the FBI that "the individual stopped still, ejected the cartridges, reloaded the gun, and then placed the weapon inside his waistband." ( 21 H 27 ) But there's no evidence that the gunman "ejected the cartridges" after having passed the Davis' apartment building. Patterson was a block away from there. How could he see that?
Another witness who took months to come forward was Mary Brock. She and her husband ran the Ballew Texaco Service Station on the 500 block of Jefferson. She was interviewed by the FBI on January 21, 1964 and told them that at approximately 1:30 pm on November 22nd, a white male wearing light clothing came past her at a fast pace. Like Patterson, she identified Oswald after being shown a single photograph, again of his mugshot, this time from New Orleans. (19 H 181)
What's interesting about this interview is that she said that FIVE MINUTES later, two individuals from the Johnny Reynolds car lot came up and inquired about the man she saw. "They informed her that this individual had in all probability shot a Dallas Police officer." First of all, a five minute head start is a long time when you're following someone. At a normal walking pace of 2.5 miles per hour (13,500 ft/hr), that's an 1,100 foot lead. That's nearly 4 football fields. How do you "follow" someone with a lead like that? Even in a car, you're going to lose them. Or maybe there's more to the story.
Reynolds and Patterson were supposed to have heard the shots, seen the gunman fleeing south on Patton, and then followed him as he went west on Jefferson and north on Crawford. How could they know that a police officer had been the victim of the shooting if they hadn't been to the scene of the murder? Supposedly, all they heard was shots. The murder scene was out of their range of vision. Because the evidence indicates that at least one of them had been.
Page 87 of Commission Document 385 is the FBI interview of Harold Russell, another employee of the Johnny Reynolds car lot, conducted on January 21st. In it Russell says that both he AND Pat Patterson "proceeded to the area of Tenth and Patton Ave."
He then implies that Patterson left to go with Warren Reynolds "to follow the individual as he headed west on Jefferson Street". I don't believe that Reynolds followed the gunman right away for the same reason I don't believe Callaway confronted an armed man while being unarmed. I believe that Reynolds watched the gunman and waited for Patterson to return before they both "followed" the path of the gunman as far as Reynolds could see. And I believe that took all of five minutes and was the reason why that they were five minutes behind the gunman getting to the gas station. And the reason why they lost him.
Look at Reynolds' own statement of 1/21/64 to the FBI in which he said that "he last observed the individual to turn north by the Ballew Texaco station and at this point he did not observe the individual." (25 H 731)
And that he had to make an inquiry at the gas station (ibid.), something he would not have had to do if he had followed the gunman and kept him in his sight. And that five minutes or ten minutes later, "an unknown source" told him that the man he had been tailing had shot and killed a uniformed officer of the Dallas Police. (ibid.) How could an unknown person know he was tailing the guy? I believe that unknown source was Pat Patterson.
Getting back to Russell, he also described the man as wearing a light blue jacket and light slacks.
He then stated that although he was an eyewitness who could identify the killer of a fellow police officer, the Dallas Police simply let him walk away while they were searching for Tippit's killer. He said, "he left the officers and then went in a nearby drug store and then went about his business and thought nothing more about it." Really.
These were the nine witnesses for the prosecution: Helen Markham, Scoggins, Callaway, Guinyard, Barbara Davis, Virginia Davis, Reynolds, Patterson and Mary Brock. Witnesses who, on the day of the murder, gave no description of the man they saw. Nine witnesses who either identified Oswald from invalid lineups or identified him from mugshots that implied his guilt. To consider these as "positive identifications" is ridiculous.
These are the types of actions you take when you're trying to influence a witness' identification and frame an innocent man for a crime he did not commit. But there were other witnesses who did not fall for these tactics, witnesses who described a man who clearly was NOT Oswald. Witnesses who refused to identify Oswald as the gunman. Witnesses whose accounts were never published nor were they called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
Because they had nothing to contribute to the "Oswald-did-it" narrative, their accounts were simply ignored and it wasn't until years later their accounts became publicized thanks to the efforts of researchers who tracked them down and made their accounts known. I call these "the defense witnesses."
NEXT WEEKEND: THE DEFENSE WITNESSES