From Dale Myers: "The death certificate "discrepancy" - as I noted in "With Malice" - was explained during a 1983 interview I conducted with the late Dr. Paul Moellenhoff, who attended Tippit at Methodist. He told me that the clocks within the emergency area at Methodist showed different times - neither of them accurate as it turns out.
He used the 1:15 p.m. time shown on one of the clocks. The time reported to the FBI by Dr. Liquori (With Malice [WM], 2013 [edition], p.557) - 1:24 pm - is probably the accurate one based on the recorded timing of Bowley's call, the recorded departure of the ambulance from 10th and Patton, and the known drive time from 10th and Patton to Methodist Hospital.
DPD Officer Davenport noted that Moellenhoff removed one slug from Tippit's body at 1:30 pm (WM 2013 p.536). That same time (1:30 pm) made its way into Leavelle's homicide report (WM 2013 p.519) as the time Tippit was pronounced DOA (which couldn't possibly be true, right? You don't pull a slug from a body until after he's pronounced dead). This matches up with Moellenhoff's 1983 recollection that he removed a slug from the body within ten minutes of declaring Tippit DOA.
My caption under the death certificate (WM 2013 p.506) seeks to clarify the discrepancy between the Time of Injury (1:18 pm) and the time Death Occurred (1:15 pm). Again, it stems from my conversation with Dr. Moellenhoff. The 1:18 pm time, of course, probably refers to the time that Bowley's radio call was received - not the actual time Tippit was shot.
The 1:15 p.m. notation (although close in time to the actual moment of the shooting, as far as I can calculate) probably stems from Dr. Moellenhoff's use of an inaccurate Methodist emergency room clock.
Interesting, huh? All this fuss because no one at Methodist bothered to synchronize the clocks to actual time (some running fast, some running slow).
Can you imagine how many other death certificates were marked with times that were off by a few minutes? But what does it matter in those cases? Not one whit."
From Dale Myers: "The death certificate "discrepancy" - as I noted in "With Malice" - was explained during a 1983 interview I conducted with the late Dr. Paul Moellenhoff, who attended Tippit at Methodist. He told me that the clocks within the emergency area at Methodist showed different times - neither of them accurate as it turns out.And prior to 1983 nobody was looking into this and/or interviewed Dr. Moellenhoff? How convenient
Even if all the clocks at the emergency area showed different times that doesn't automatically mean they were all wrong.
He used the 1:15 p.m. time shown on one of the clocks. It is an assumption to believe that the clock used, i.e. the one showing 1.15 was wrong.
The time reported to the FBI by Dr. Liquori (With Malice [WM], 2013 [edition], p.557) - 1:24 pm - is probably the accurate one based on the recorded timing of Bowley's call, the recorded departure of the ambulance from 10th and Patton, and the known drive time from 10th and Patton to Methodist Hospital. We know for a fact that the clocks used by the DPD dispatchers did not reflect real time, because J.C. Bowles, who was in charge of the DPD dispatchers, told the HSCA that the times given verbally by the dispatchers (and thus copied in the transcripts) aren't reliable to determine the real time.
Two quotes from the same page:
http://www.jfk-online.com/bowles1.html#setA master clock on the telephone room wall was connected to the City Hall system. This clock reported "official" time. Within the dispatcher's office there were numerous other time giving and time recording devices, both in the telephone room and in the radio room. Telephone operators and radio operators were furnished "Simplex" clocks. Because the hands often worked loose, they indicated the incorrect time. However, their purpose was to stamp the time, day and date on incoming calls. While they were reliable at this, they were not synchronized as stated in the Committee report. Therefore, it was not uncommon for the time stamped on calls to be a minute to two ahead or behind the "official" time shown on the master clock. Accordingly, at "exactly" 10:10, various clocks could be stamping from 10:08 to 10:12, for example. When clocks were as much as a minute or so out of synchronization it was normal procedure to make the needed adjustments. During busy periods this was not readily done.
There is no way to connect "police time" with "real time." The Committee Report stated that the Dallas Police Communications system was recorded by continuously operating recorders. That statement is incorrect. Channel 1 was recorded on a Dictaphone A2TC, Model 5, belt or loop recorder. Channel 2 was recorded on a Gray "Audograph" flat disk recorder. Both were duplex units with one recording and one on standby for when the other unit contained a full recording. Both units were sound activated. It is important to note "sound" rather than "voice" because either sound or noise from any source, received through the transmission line, would activate the recorders. Once activated, the recorders remained "on" for the duration of the activating sound plus 4 seconds. The four second delay permitted brief pauses or answers to questions without the relay mechanism being overworked. On occasion, the recorders would operate almost continuously because rapid radio traffic kept them operating. On November 22, 1963, the Channel 1 recorders became, for practical purposes, continuous recorders for just over five minutes starting at approximately 12:29 pm (Channel 1 time) because the microphone on a police motorcycle stuck in the "on" position. The resulting continuous transmission kept the Channel 1 recorders operating for just over five minutes thus giving us a real-time recording for that period. The only problem was determining a basis for an accurate time reference during that period. and there is no time for the "recorded departure of the ambulance from 10th and Patton".
DPD Officer Davenport noted that Moellenhoff removed one slug from Tippit's body at 1:30 pm (WM 2013 p.536). That same time (1:30 pm) made its way into Leavelle's homicide report (WM 2013 p.519) as the time Tippit was pronounced DOA (which couldn't possibly be true, right? You don't pull a slug from a body until after he's pronounced dead). This matches up with Moellenhoff's 1983 recollection that he removed a slug from the body within ten minutes of declaring Tippit DOA.Non sequitur. Whatever made it's way into Leavelle's homicide report is irrelevant as he wasn't there at Methodist Hospital and thus must have gotten that information from somebody else. And I don't think that Moellenhoff was using a stopwatch, so nothwithstanding his 1983 (twenty years after the fact) recollection it might just as well have been 15 minutes. Davenport registered the DOA time when it happened. That's a lot more solid than a 20 year old unverifiable memory.
My caption under the death certificate (WM 2013 p.506) seeks to clarify the discrepancy between the Time of Injury (1:18 pm) and the time Death Occurred (1:15 pm). Again, it stems from my conversation with Dr. Moellenhoff. The 1:18 pm time, of course, probably refers to the time that Bowley's radio call was received - not the actual time Tippit was shot.Pure selfserving speculation based on a 20 year old memory combined with transcripts of DPD radio that do not reflect real time, and none of it matches with known facts from the day it actually happened.
The 1:15 p.m. notation (although close in time to the actual moment of the shooting, as far as I can calculate) probably stems from Dr. Moellenhoff's use of an inaccurate Methodist emergency room clock.
Interesting, huh? All this fuss because no one at Methodist bothered to synchronize the clocks to actual time (some running fast, some running slow).
Can you imagine how many other death certificates were marked with times that were off by a few minutes? But what does it matter in those cases? Not one whit."No, not interesting at all, because it is pure speculation. There is nothing solid in what Moellenhoff allegedly told Myers. And even if all other death certificates gave the wrong time of death, that still does not mean that Tippit's death certificate also does. Nor is it of any significance how much or little it mattered in other cases, it still matters in this one.
