Post by John Duncan on Mar 25, 2022 15:00:28 GMT -5
This post is by Donald Willis and it was posted in March of 2021.
Only Oswald could have told McWatters that "the president was shot in the temple"
"I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman and asked her if she knew the president had been shot.... I told her if she did not believe me to ask the man behind her that he had told me the president was shot in the temple". (Cecil J. McWatters 11/22/63 affidavit)
Bus driver McWatters told the FBI on 11/22: "Somewhere after he [McWatters] turned on Marsalis he said to a male passenger, 'I wonder where they shot the President?' This man said, 'They shot him in the temple'.... [McWatters] picked up an old lady at the corner of Vermont & Marsalis.... He told her... to ask the man sitting behind him. She looked at this man , who was the one who had told McWatters that the President had been shot in the temple...."
Already, McWatters has begun the systematic dismantling of his affidavit of the same day, adding to the latter details which are intended to negate his lineup identification of Lee Oswald as the man whom he bussed into Oak Cliff.
1) What, in his (signed) affidavit, was "This man looks like the #2 man I saw in a line up tonight"--an identification called "positive" by the police, on the lineup card ("With Malice", p. 458)--becomes, in the (unsigned) FBI report, "He stated that this man was Lee Oswald, but emphasized that he cannot specifically identify him as being on his bus or as being the person who made the remark to the effect that the President was shot in the temple". (In other words, all that McWatters is now saying is that there happened to be someone in the lineup named Lee Oswald.)
2) No mention was made in his affidavit that he had "heard over a radio in a car sitting next to the bus that the President had been shot".
3) "This man" has now become, in the FBI report, "a teen-ager".
4) "I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman" has become "He picked up an old lady at the corner of Vermont and Marsalis...." The addition of the pick-up cross street for McWatters' "shot in the temple" woman was apparently supposed to have sealed the deal: Vermont is about a dozen blocks beyond the area of 10th & Patton and several more than that beyond Oswald's rooming house. Exit Oswald, enter the "teen-ager".
Roy Milton Jones [the teenager], on 3/30/64, told the FBI, "The bus driver asked [the woman who had boarded 'after they crossed the Marsalis Bridge'] whether she had heard that the President had been shot.... [He] pointed to Jones and said, 'Ask him, he saw it'." [Jones couldn't have seen "it"--he had been in school.]....The woman turned to [Jones] and he told her, 'I don't know anything about it. I just heard some others say that the President had been shot'.... Jones advised that he could not recall any conversation between the bus driver & himself or any other person on the bus about the President being shot in the temple. He said he did not hear any person make this remark on the bus." (This "advisement" seems to come out of the blue since Jones, in his account, had not yet mentioned the word "temple". Apparently, it was embedded in an FBI question.)
Exit the teenager. Strike "Vermont".
Contrary to Jones' statement here, McWatters said, in his 11/22 affidavit, "This man...never did say anything [to the woman]." Again, and more importantly, also contrary to Jones' statement, McWatters said, as noted above, in his FBI statement, that it was Jones who told him that the President "had been shot in the temple". And Jones' telltale "He saw it" could have applied only to Oswald, not to Jones.
Again, in his Commission testimony, McWatters tried to pin "shot in the temple" on Jones:
"Well, there was a teenage boy, I would say 17 or 18 years of age... and after I turned on Houston Street I said to him and I made the remark, I wonder where the President was shot, and I believe he made the remark that it was probably in the head if he was in a convertible or something to that effect."
Desperate--or maybe just hopelessly confused--McWatters, elsewhere in that same testimony, contradicts himself re the "teenager":
Senator Cooper: "Is [Oswald] the same man who told you that the President had been shot in the temple?" / McWatters: "No, sir." / Cooper: "Who told you that?" / McWatters: "A man in an automobile in front of me, in other words, that was sitting in a car come back and told me." / Cooper: "Told you what?" / McWatters: "That the President had been shot, that he had heard over his radio in his car that the President had been shot."
Auto ex machina. Scorecard so far: McWatters has now taken three stabs at identifying the person who told him that the President had been "shot in the temple"--Oswald, Jones, and the "man in the automobile". Then, McWatters, almost immediately, cancels out his third choice, automobile man, by reverting to his old standard, "the teenager", later in his testimony:
Ball: "You told [the woman on the bus]... if she didn't believe [you] to ask the man behind her, that he had told [you] that the President was shot in the temple". / McWatters: "Yes." / Ball: "Was that the man, was that the teenager?" / McWatters: "Yes."
And, as we have seen, Jones rejects McWatters' second choice, Jones himself. That leaves... Oswald. McWatters fecklessly denies almost everything in his 11/22 affidavit. But he cannot come up with a viable alternate source to Oswald for that "shot in the temple", in his affidavit. That source, then, must have been... Oswald.
On page 2 of CE 2641, Jones recounts the story--apparently first told in McWatters' Commission testimony--of Oswald and the lady getting on, then off the bus on Elm St. But Jones then adds that he thought that "it might have been Oswald only because the driver told him so". McWatters, in his testimony, admits--when asked if he has not "seen this young man several times since [Nov. 22nd]--"Yes, sir." Plenty of time, then, for the 17-year-old Jones to absorb, also, the on-and-off story from McWatters. "Only because the bus driver told him so...." Corroboration by osmosis....
Note also the admirable precision bus choreography of the on-and-off man-and-woman. ON "6 blocks before Houston", OFF "4 blocks before Houston", about the same time (says Jones) that a policeman "told the driver no one was to leave the bus" (p2) If this were a movie, you wouldn't buy the split-second timing of it all. Another minute, and Oswald is stuck on Elm until about 1:44! (See the "A final clue" paragraph near the end here.) Hitchcock would have been most pleased.
The serio-comic odyssey of the man who told McWatters that the President was "shot in the temple" ends right back where it started: with McWatters' 11/22 affidavit. Almost as if the poor bedevilled, poked and prodded McWatters was straining mightily to pass on that phrase to someone, anyone but Oswald. Why? Because in his original affidavit, McWatters attributed it to "the man behind" the woman on the Marsalis bus in Oak Cliff. Because, if that man were Oswald, then the latter would have gotten to Oak Cliff too late to have shot Patrolman J.D. Tippit. (See below.)
The core of both of McWatters' versions of his story (one starring Oswald, one starring Jones) and of Jones' version is the McWatters/Marsalis-woman incident, and the broad outline of all three versions is similar. But Jones adamantly rejects the core of the core: the phrase "shot in the temple".
Exhibit A: In his 11/22/63 FBI interview, McWatters states that his bus was "delayed for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes [on Elm St.] due to a traffic jam."
Exhibit B: The Warren Report (p163) notes that an Oswald walk from the bus (at 1:44) to the bus station, "where Oswald entered [William] Whaley's cab, would have taken him three or four minutes." Then, a six-minute cab ride would have gotten Oswald to Oak Cliff about 12:54 (p163), then it's another six minutes, on foot, to the rooming house (p163 again), or about 1 o'clock.
Back to the bus: According to McWatters, the bus was still stuck on Elm as late as 12:59, and a six-minute-plus bus ride would have gotten him to Marsalis and 5th St. (the closest possible Marsalis stop to the rooming house), in Oak Cliff, about 1:05.
Meanwhile--back to Whaley's cab--the intersection of Neely & Beckley (the supposed cab drop-off site) and the intersection of Marsalis & 5th St. are roughly equidistant from the rooming house. So a six-minute walk (p163) for cab Oswald from Neely & Beckley to the rooming house would also be about a six-minute walk from Marsalis & 5th, which latter would put bus Oswald at the house at about 1:11.
The WR (p165) times the walk, "at a brisk pace", from 1026 N. Beckley to 10th & Patton at about 12 or 13 minutes. That would put the bus-to-Oak Cliff Oswald there about 1:23.
Exhibit C: Dale Myers pegs the time that Tippit was shot--at 10th & Patton--at 1:14 ("With Malice" p382). Missed it by that much....
However, if bus Oswald left 1026 N. Beckley at about 1:13 and walked the 15 blocks or so, straight to the *theater*, he would have arrived there about 1:35, leaving him time in-between to evade police cars--he had, after all, fired a shot or two in Dealey and would most probably be a little nervous....
A final clue that Jones was not McWatters' man, the man "who told [him] the president was shot in the temple", a clue that Jones was perhaps not even on the same bus as Oswald: Jones said that the bus on which he was riding was "held up by... police officers... who boarded the bus and checked each passenger to see if any were carrying firearms... [this bus was] held up for ABOUT ONE HOUR...." (CE 2641 pp2,3). Startlingly, McWatters does not mention this significant incident. Somewhat more significant, at least, than being held up by traffic for some 15 minutes.
Moreover, Jones "recalled that at this time a policeman notified the driver the President had been shot...." (p2) So, when Jones says that he "heard some others say that the President had been shot", he meant that he heard the police saying that... to "the driver". "The driver". Not only does McWatters not recall the police holding up his bus "for about one hour", he does not recall a policeman telling him that the "President had been shot". Automobile man didn't tell him. Jones didn't tell him. Did a policeman tell him? Jones overheard a policeman telling *a* driver, not necessarily McWatters. What bus was McWatters driving? What planet was he on? Not Jones' bus, at least. Maybe not Jones' planet.
Upshot: Oswald was "the man behind" the woman on the bus in Oak Cliff.
Note: There is no reason to believe that the so-called "hard [physical] evidence" here was treated any more honestly than was the witness evidence. That is, the lad who was fortuitously "discovered", and then haplessly maintained by McWatters to have been the "shot in the temple" man--the lad was obviously not that man, and McWatters had no overt reason of his own to say that Jones was that man. The ones who did have reason were the ones who wanted to pin two murders on Oswald, not just the one for which he was, I believe, responsible....
Perhaps, in fact, they were the ones of which Roy Milton Jones was speaking here, in his FBI interview (page 4):
"[Jones] said that, in conversation with this same bus driver on the following Monday, the driver told him the Dallas Police Department had him up until one o'clock on Saturday or Sunday morning questioning him about the passenger on his bus who looked like Lee Harvey Oswald."
Only Oswald could have told McWatters that "the president was shot in the temple"
"I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman and asked her if she knew the president had been shot.... I told her if she did not believe me to ask the man behind her that he had told me the president was shot in the temple". (Cecil J. McWatters 11/22/63 affidavit)
Bus driver McWatters told the FBI on 11/22: "Somewhere after he [McWatters] turned on Marsalis he said to a male passenger, 'I wonder where they shot the President?' This man said, 'They shot him in the temple'.... [McWatters] picked up an old lady at the corner of Vermont & Marsalis.... He told her... to ask the man sitting behind him. She looked at this man , who was the one who had told McWatters that the President had been shot in the temple...."
Already, McWatters has begun the systematic dismantling of his affidavit of the same day, adding to the latter details which are intended to negate his lineup identification of Lee Oswald as the man whom he bussed into Oak Cliff.
1) What, in his (signed) affidavit, was "This man looks like the #2 man I saw in a line up tonight"--an identification called "positive" by the police, on the lineup card ("With Malice", p. 458)--becomes, in the (unsigned) FBI report, "He stated that this man was Lee Oswald, but emphasized that he cannot specifically identify him as being on his bus or as being the person who made the remark to the effect that the President was shot in the temple". (In other words, all that McWatters is now saying is that there happened to be someone in the lineup named Lee Oswald.)
2) No mention was made in his affidavit that he had "heard over a radio in a car sitting next to the bus that the President had been shot".
3) "This man" has now become, in the FBI report, "a teen-ager".
4) "I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman" has become "He picked up an old lady at the corner of Vermont and Marsalis...." The addition of the pick-up cross street for McWatters' "shot in the temple" woman was apparently supposed to have sealed the deal: Vermont is about a dozen blocks beyond the area of 10th & Patton and several more than that beyond Oswald's rooming house. Exit Oswald, enter the "teen-ager".
Roy Milton Jones [the teenager], on 3/30/64, told the FBI, "The bus driver asked [the woman who had boarded 'after they crossed the Marsalis Bridge'] whether she had heard that the President had been shot.... [He] pointed to Jones and said, 'Ask him, he saw it'." [Jones couldn't have seen "it"--he had been in school.]....The woman turned to [Jones] and he told her, 'I don't know anything about it. I just heard some others say that the President had been shot'.... Jones advised that he could not recall any conversation between the bus driver & himself or any other person on the bus about the President being shot in the temple. He said he did not hear any person make this remark on the bus." (This "advisement" seems to come out of the blue since Jones, in his account, had not yet mentioned the word "temple". Apparently, it was embedded in an FBI question.)
Exit the teenager. Strike "Vermont".
Contrary to Jones' statement here, McWatters said, in his 11/22 affidavit, "This man...never did say anything [to the woman]." Again, and more importantly, also contrary to Jones' statement, McWatters said, as noted above, in his FBI statement, that it was Jones who told him that the President "had been shot in the temple". And Jones' telltale "He saw it" could have applied only to Oswald, not to Jones.
Again, in his Commission testimony, McWatters tried to pin "shot in the temple" on Jones:
"Well, there was a teenage boy, I would say 17 or 18 years of age... and after I turned on Houston Street I said to him and I made the remark, I wonder where the President was shot, and I believe he made the remark that it was probably in the head if he was in a convertible or something to that effect."
Desperate--or maybe just hopelessly confused--McWatters, elsewhere in that same testimony, contradicts himself re the "teenager":
Senator Cooper: "Is [Oswald] the same man who told you that the President had been shot in the temple?" / McWatters: "No, sir." / Cooper: "Who told you that?" / McWatters: "A man in an automobile in front of me, in other words, that was sitting in a car come back and told me." / Cooper: "Told you what?" / McWatters: "That the President had been shot, that he had heard over his radio in his car that the President had been shot."
Auto ex machina. Scorecard so far: McWatters has now taken three stabs at identifying the person who told him that the President had been "shot in the temple"--Oswald, Jones, and the "man in the automobile". Then, McWatters, almost immediately, cancels out his third choice, automobile man, by reverting to his old standard, "the teenager", later in his testimony:
Ball: "You told [the woman on the bus]... if she didn't believe [you] to ask the man behind her, that he had told [you] that the President was shot in the temple". / McWatters: "Yes." / Ball: "Was that the man, was that the teenager?" / McWatters: "Yes."
And, as we have seen, Jones rejects McWatters' second choice, Jones himself. That leaves... Oswald. McWatters fecklessly denies almost everything in his 11/22 affidavit. But he cannot come up with a viable alternate source to Oswald for that "shot in the temple", in his affidavit. That source, then, must have been... Oswald.
On page 2 of CE 2641, Jones recounts the story--apparently first told in McWatters' Commission testimony--of Oswald and the lady getting on, then off the bus on Elm St. But Jones then adds that he thought that "it might have been Oswald only because the driver told him so". McWatters, in his testimony, admits--when asked if he has not "seen this young man several times since [Nov. 22nd]--"Yes, sir." Plenty of time, then, for the 17-year-old Jones to absorb, also, the on-and-off story from McWatters. "Only because the bus driver told him so...." Corroboration by osmosis....
Note also the admirable precision bus choreography of the on-and-off man-and-woman. ON "6 blocks before Houston", OFF "4 blocks before Houston", about the same time (says Jones) that a policeman "told the driver no one was to leave the bus" (p2) If this were a movie, you wouldn't buy the split-second timing of it all. Another minute, and Oswald is stuck on Elm until about 1:44! (See the "A final clue" paragraph near the end here.) Hitchcock would have been most pleased.
The serio-comic odyssey of the man who told McWatters that the President was "shot in the temple" ends right back where it started: with McWatters' 11/22 affidavit. Almost as if the poor bedevilled, poked and prodded McWatters was straining mightily to pass on that phrase to someone, anyone but Oswald. Why? Because in his original affidavit, McWatters attributed it to "the man behind" the woman on the Marsalis bus in Oak Cliff. Because, if that man were Oswald, then the latter would have gotten to Oak Cliff too late to have shot Patrolman J.D. Tippit. (See below.)
The core of both of McWatters' versions of his story (one starring Oswald, one starring Jones) and of Jones' version is the McWatters/Marsalis-woman incident, and the broad outline of all three versions is similar. But Jones adamantly rejects the core of the core: the phrase "shot in the temple".
Exhibit A: In his 11/22/63 FBI interview, McWatters states that his bus was "delayed for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes [on Elm St.] due to a traffic jam."
Exhibit B: The Warren Report (p163) notes that an Oswald walk from the bus (at 1:44) to the bus station, "where Oswald entered [William] Whaley's cab, would have taken him three or four minutes." Then, a six-minute cab ride would have gotten Oswald to Oak Cliff about 12:54 (p163), then it's another six minutes, on foot, to the rooming house (p163 again), or about 1 o'clock.
Back to the bus: According to McWatters, the bus was still stuck on Elm as late as 12:59, and a six-minute-plus bus ride would have gotten him to Marsalis and 5th St. (the closest possible Marsalis stop to the rooming house), in Oak Cliff, about 1:05.
Meanwhile--back to Whaley's cab--the intersection of Neely & Beckley (the supposed cab drop-off site) and the intersection of Marsalis & 5th St. are roughly equidistant from the rooming house. So a six-minute walk (p163) for cab Oswald from Neely & Beckley to the rooming house would also be about a six-minute walk from Marsalis & 5th, which latter would put bus Oswald at the house at about 1:11.
The WR (p165) times the walk, "at a brisk pace", from 1026 N. Beckley to 10th & Patton at about 12 or 13 minutes. That would put the bus-to-Oak Cliff Oswald there about 1:23.
Exhibit C: Dale Myers pegs the time that Tippit was shot--at 10th & Patton--at 1:14 ("With Malice" p382). Missed it by that much....
However, if bus Oswald left 1026 N. Beckley at about 1:13 and walked the 15 blocks or so, straight to the *theater*, he would have arrived there about 1:35, leaving him time in-between to evade police cars--he had, after all, fired a shot or two in Dealey and would most probably be a little nervous....
A final clue that Jones was not McWatters' man, the man "who told [him] the president was shot in the temple", a clue that Jones was perhaps not even on the same bus as Oswald: Jones said that the bus on which he was riding was "held up by... police officers... who boarded the bus and checked each passenger to see if any were carrying firearms... [this bus was] held up for ABOUT ONE HOUR...." (CE 2641 pp2,3). Startlingly, McWatters does not mention this significant incident. Somewhat more significant, at least, than being held up by traffic for some 15 minutes.
Moreover, Jones "recalled that at this time a policeman notified the driver the President had been shot...." (p2) So, when Jones says that he "heard some others say that the President had been shot", he meant that he heard the police saying that... to "the driver". "The driver". Not only does McWatters not recall the police holding up his bus "for about one hour", he does not recall a policeman telling him that the "President had been shot". Automobile man didn't tell him. Jones didn't tell him. Did a policeman tell him? Jones overheard a policeman telling *a* driver, not necessarily McWatters. What bus was McWatters driving? What planet was he on? Not Jones' bus, at least. Maybe not Jones' planet.
Upshot: Oswald was "the man behind" the woman on the bus in Oak Cliff.
Note: There is no reason to believe that the so-called "hard [physical] evidence" here was treated any more honestly than was the witness evidence. That is, the lad who was fortuitously "discovered", and then haplessly maintained by McWatters to have been the "shot in the temple" man--the lad was obviously not that man, and McWatters had no overt reason of his own to say that Jones was that man. The ones who did have reason were the ones who wanted to pin two murders on Oswald, not just the one for which he was, I believe, responsible....
Perhaps, in fact, they were the ones of which Roy Milton Jones was speaking here, in his FBI interview (page 4):
"[Jones] said that, in conversation with this same bus driver on the following Monday, the driver told him the Dallas Police Department had him up until one o'clock on Saturday or Sunday morning questioning him about the passenger on his bus who looked like Lee Harvey Oswald."