This is a slightly tweaked rehash of Dale Myers' discredited "stop-watch" analysis of the time of the Tippit shooting. I address the time of the shooting in detail in my article "Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?":
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_j_022lJYli3B5Xyw8wLs-0nl6mDLo2t/view
I quote from part of my discussion on the issue:
This is a critical issue. Myers claims that Tippit was shot at 1:14:30, but the weight of
the evidence clearly indicates that the shooting occurred between 1:08 and 1:10, too
soon for Oswald to have walked to the scene. Moreover, two witnesses said that
Oswald entered the Texas Theater just a few minutes after 1:00 P.M., and that he
remained in the theater until he was arrested there about an hour later (Tom Lyons,
“The Ruddy Link Between the Tippit Murder and the Texas Theater,” The Fourth
Decade, July 1997, 4:5, p. 6).
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The foundation of Myers' argument regarding when the Tippit shooting occurred is his
"stop-watch analysis" of the police tapes. Although the DPD and FBI transcripts have
Bowley calling the dispatcher at about 1:16, and even though Bowley said it was 1:10
when he first arrived to the scene, Myers says his stop-watch review of the tapes shows
Bowley did not make the call until 1:17:41 (p. 92). If Bowley did not call the police
dispatcher till 1:17:41, why did the Sheriff's Department dispatcher apparently begin to
respond to the shooting at 1:16, as the Sheriff's Office tape transcript seems to show
(17 H 372)?
Almost immediately after the 1:16 time notation, the Sheriff's dispatcher tells all units to
stay off the radio unless they have important traffic. Then, the dispatcher tries to contact
any squads in the area of "Jefferson and East 10th, 510 East Jefferson and 10th." This
is significant because this address is a combination of the address that Bowley and
dispatcher Hulse gave over the police radio. A deputy sheriff responds, and the
dispatcher tells him to remain in the area and to be on the watch for emergency
vehicles. . . .
The bulk of the evidence indicates that Tippit was shot several minutes earlier than
Myers can allow, and several minutes before Oswald could have arrived at the scene.
Myers sidesteps most of this evidence. For example, Myers fails to mention that Mrs.
Markham felt certain Tippit was shot at around 1:06 or 1:07. Bowley's watch-checked
time of 1:10 for his arrival at the scene matches well with Markham's time of 1:06-1:07
for the shooting and with Benavides' account that he waited a few minutes before he
approached the patrol car. It also corresponds with other eyewitness estimates of when
the shooting occurred.
The evidence clearly indicates that Tippit was shot very soon after he exited his car at
1:08. Tippit’s last transmission was at 1:08 and was mostly likely made to let the
dispatcher know that he was exiting his car, which was standard procedure. And, as
mentioned, Bowley arrived at the scene at 1:10. Thus, Markham’s time of 1:06 or 1:07
for the shooting is very close to the mark. Perhaps Myers did not think he could afford to
mention Mrs. Markham's comments about when the shooting occurred because he had
already noted that Markham was en route to her regular 1:12-1:15 bus when she
witnessed the Tippit slaying. Several other facts support Mrs. Markham's statements
about the time of the shooting.
Mrs. Markham said that she left her apartment building at 1:04, that it would have taken
her about 2 minutes to walk from her apartment building to the Tippit scene, that she
walked to her bus stop every day, and that she had a routine of leaving at 1:00 to catch
her bus. Myers would have us believe that Markham erred substantially, by 7 minutes,
in her recollection of when she left her apartment building, even though she noted that
as she was leaving she glanced at the clock in the laundry room of her apartment
building and that the clock read 1:04. Nonetheless, Myers argues that Mrs. Markham
was mistaken.
(the rest is snipped because it veers off topic)
1.) The 1:08 channel 1 transmission was not made by "78" (Tippit) but by "388" (a CID squad). The DPD radio transcripts in Exhibit 705 are full of errors and omissions, and aren't particularly trustworthy. Use the Shearer transcript: it's not absolutely perfect, but it is the gold standard.
2.) Bowley said his watch read 1:10PM when he stepped out of his station wagon. But, in
Into The Nightmare, he conceded that his watch might have been as much as five minutes off. This would be expected in 1963. Those were the days when everyone had spring-driven mechanical watches of often-questionable reliability. So the time he left his car could be as late as 1:15 PM.
3.) Markham's time estimate for the murder is derived from the time she saw in a laundromat's clock when she set off to work. I've been in a lot of laundromats in my life, and my experiences tell me that anyone who relies on laundromat time is being completely foolish. Some will, no doubt, attempt to rely on her statement that she was trying to catch her "1:15" bus. But there was no 1:15 bus. There was a 1:12 bus and a 1:22 bus and a 1:32 bus. Maybe you're tempted to think, "well, she musta been talking about the 1:12 bus." But if she wanted to get a specific bus at a specific time, she would have known exactly what time it was scheduled to arrive. With those possibilities ruled out, all were left with is that Markham tried to get to the bus stop at whatever to her was 1:15 and took the next bus that came along. There is little reason to put any value in basing anything on Markham's time estimate.
4.) The clock used by the DPD channel dispatcher is within 1 minute of the Hertz sign on top of the TSBD, Kellerman's watch, Forrest Sorrel's watch, and Kenney O'Donnell's watch, as is discussed elsewhere on this board. And the Channel 1 and channel 2 clocks were also within 1 minute of each other, which is also discussed elsewhere on this board. BBN performed a regression analysis of the channel 1 and channel 2 time annotations and determined that the Ch.1 and Ch. 2 clocks are within a minute of each other. If channel 2 is within a minute of standard time, and channel 1 time is within a minute of channel 2 time, then channel 1 can be as much as (but no more) than 2 minutes off of standard time.
5.) Meyers put the beginning of Bowley's transmission at 1:17:41, working forward from the 1:16 time annotations on channel 1. There is a considerable about of dead air between the last 1:16 announcement and Bowley's call, so it's likely that the Dictabelt shut itself down for some amount of time during this interval. The system was designed to cease recording 4 seconds after it stopped receiving a signal. However, no such dead space exists in the minutes immediately after the end of the Bowley transmission, due to the intense response to the news of Tippit's shooting. So I worked backwards from the two 1:19 announcements and found that Bowley's transmission begins at 1:17:54 +/- 00:00:10.
If Bowley's watch is 5 minutes slow, which he concedes was possible, and Channel 1 is running 2 minutes fast, also possible, then there is no real discrepancy between the two. With the "1:08 Tippit broadcast" being a mirage and Markham's "1:06 or 1:07" time being an estimate based on a clock of dubious accuracy made by a woman who is routinely derided as some sort of dingbat, the remaining evidence actually does put the Bowley transmission no earlier than late in 1:15 PM.
