CIA Wallets at Tenth and Patton

[Richard Smith]

Martin Weidmann— I did not realize you were proposing a crime scene wallet might be the one turned in later as the Oswald wallet in evidence, and not the one said to have been taken from Oswald in the car. That removes some of my objection of irrelevance to the crime scene issue. But may I ask, are you meaning this as evidence Oswald was present at the crime scene with Hidell ID? Do you think Oswald shot Tippit? Do you think he accidentally dropped his wallet at the scene, or handed his wallet to Tippit? I’m having trouble seeing where you go with this.

30 years later for a first mention of something that would be expected memorable from the beginning is the key fact making this urban legend genre. Not all witness claims are equal. Analogy that comes to mind is the claim of Secret Service agent Mike Howard that a torn out page in Oswald’s address book had a death list of four people Oswald intended to kill, that Howard claimed he saw the first week. The problem is there is no verification and Howard first mentioned it nearly 30 years after the fact. Sure he said it. Still does. But nobody believes it (I sure don’t) because of the 30-yr delay for a first witness claim that has no other verification. This Oswald wallet at the crime scene very parallel to the Mike Howard claim. They’re both equally unbelievable and for exactly parallel reasons.

Like Inspector Clouseau "Martin" suspects everyone and he suspects no one.  It makes absolutely no sense for the authorities to find an Oswald wallet at the Tippit murder scene but then claim it was found on him when arrested.  Obviously, a wallet left at the murder scene is highly incriminating evidence of the involvement of its owner.   If the investigators are in a position to suppress the wallet Oswald carried when arrested, then they had a choice as to which wallet to suppress.  They would have gone with the highly incriminating wallet left or planted at the murder scene.  To the extent that they needed to take anything from Oswald's arrest wallet, they could easily have placed it in the Tippit wallet.  They controlled the evidence.  This is all just rabbit hole nonsense that goes nowhere.

[Martin Weidmann]

Martin Weidmann— I did not realize you were proposing a crime scene wallet might be the one turned in later as the Oswald wallet in evidence, and not the one said to have been taken from Oswald in the car. That removes some of my objection of irrelevance to the crime scene issue. But may I ask, are you meaning this as evidence Oswald was present at the crime scene with Hidell ID? Do you think Oswald shot Tippit? Do you think he accidentally dropped his wallet at the scene, or handed his wallet to Tippit? I’m having trouble seeing where you go with this.

30 years later for a first mention of something that would be expected memorable from the beginning is the key fact making this urban legend genre. Not all witness claims are equal. Analogy that comes to mind is the claim of Secret Service agent Mike Howard that a torn out page in Oswald’s address book had a death list of four people Oswald intended to kill, that Howard claimed he saw the first week. The problem is there is no verification and Howard first mentioned it nearly 30 years after the fact. Sure he said it. Still does. But nobody believes it (I sure don’t) because of the 30-yr delay for a first witness claim that has no other verification. This Oswald wallet at the crime scene very parallel to the Mike Howard claim. They’re both equally unbelievable and for exactly parallel reasons.

I did not realize you were proposing a crime scene wallet might be the one turned in later as the Oswald wallet in evidence, and not the one said to have been taken from Oswald in the car.

In my previous posts I made it clear enough that this was a possibility.

Let's examine what we actually know;

Hill and Bentley were sitting on either side of Oswald on the back seat of the car, when Hill asked Bentley to look for identification. Bentley found a wallet and, according to Hill, mentioned Lee Oswald. Not a word about Hidell by any of the officers in the car until Hill, during his WC testimony on April 8, 1964, vaguely remembers another name, which could have been Hidell, was also mentioned in the car. There is not a single report (including the one filed by Bentley on 11/22/63) that actually mentions an Hidell ID being found in that wallet.

On the other hand we have FBI agent Barrett who not only clearly states that Westbrook was holding a wallet and asked him about Hidell and Oswald at the Tippit crime scene but also called the suggestion that the wallet with the Hidell ID in it was taken from Oswald in the car, "hogwash".

This is were it gets complicated. When the car arrived at City Hall, Bentley went to the homicide bureau to write a report (the one in which he does not mention Hidell!) before being taken to the hospital. What happened to the wallet that Bentley has is anybody's guess. Bentley writes in his report that he gave the identification to Lt. Baker, after he had initialed the revolver together with Hill. The problem is that, according to Hill, that happened at around 4:00 PM. And then we have officer Walker who had been at the Tippit crime scene, who claims in his WC testimony that when Oswald was brought into the homicide bureau (at around 1:15 PM , IIRC) he (Walker) had the revolver and the Hidell identification.

So, now we turn to Guy Rose, who had been called in and arrived just as Oswald was being brought in. He was the first officer to talk to Oswald and just before that happened an unidentified patrol officer gave him a wallet and told him it belonged to the suspect. That's the wallet in which Rose found the Hidell ID.

So, here is the discrepancy; if Bentley gave the wallet to Lt Baker at around 4:00 PM, how could Rose have had it at just past 1:00 PM when he talked to Oswald and how could the wallet containing the Hidell ID be submitted to the evidence room at 3:35 PM.

Do you understand the problem now?

But may I ask, are you meaning this as evidence Oswald was present at the crime scene with Hidell ID?

No. It's only potential evidence that a wallet containing the Oswald and Hidell ID was at the Tippit crime scene. How it got there is anybody's guess.

Do you think Oswald shot Tippit?

What I think is not really important, but since you asked; I think it's a mistake to jump to conclusions.

It all comes down to opportunity and motive. Could Oswald have arrived at 10th street in time to kill Tippit? What was he even doing there? And if he shot Tippit to evade arrest why not leave after Tippit was down? Why go back and shoot him in the head to ensure he was dead? It doesn't make sense to me. The coup the grace shot is a complete mystery to me.

Do you think he accidentally dropped his wallet at the scene, or handed his wallet to Tippit?

I have no idea. Once again, you assume that it was Oswald himself who carried that wallet but we don't know that.

30 years later for a first mention of something that would be expected memorable from the beginning is the key fact making this urban legend genre.

I've already said this once before. What if Barrett, for 30 years, had no knowledge there was even a problem with the wallet until he talked to Hosty? Vicki Adams wasn't heard from for decades because she wasn't aware what the WC had said about her reliablity or lack thereof. As the case was closed in 1964, Barrett, like most people, would have gotten on with his life and most likely never had a reason to second guess the WC report.

This Oswald wallet at the crime scene very parallel to the Mike Howard claim. They’re both equally unbelievable and for exactly parallel reasons.

No. The wallet story has footage showing it being held at the Tippit scene. There's also circumstantial evidence to support the possibility of wallets being switched.

The only reason for you to call them both unbelievable is that you don't want to believe them. It is as simple as that.

[Greg Doudna]

Martin Weidmann, it is not correct that the reason I reject the crime scene Oswald wallet first known in Hosty’s book in the late 1990’s is because that is what I want to believe. No, it is because witness claims always must be assessed case by case and that is how it looks to me evidentially as a judgment, on evidence grounds alone. If anything, I have a bias to want to read the evidence in a way that Oswald is innocent, which I have to attempt consciously not to interfere with objectivity (if that is possible). But what about yourself. You will agree, I believe, that upon first encounter of the Barrett story from 1990’s with its sensational claim, that cannot automatically, right off the bat, be known true or false. No witness saying something out of the blue 30 years later makes it true just because he said it. Agreed?

Then the next question is what did tip you to belief that 30-years later witness claim was true? Was a factor in there that you want it to be true (your own question to you)?

A first question in assessing a witness making a new sensational claim 30 years later for the first time (publicly) is always asked by investigative journalists. Did this witness tell others privately of this earlier or from the original time? Answer in Barrett’s case: no. Second question investigative journalists ask: is there positive corroboration from other evidence or witnesses to the late sensational claim? Answer: none known at that time. There was a wallet, that is not in dispute, but there is no positive evidence it was considered crime scene evidence by police, and there is a plausible explanation for it (as I hsve outlined related to the Tippit revolver incident recovery). Therefore the Barrett story is not needed to explain what otherwise has no conceivable reasonable other explanation.

Is it the personal character and credibility of the witness, Barrett? An argument can be made that he tried to incriminate Oswald at earlier times through a false claim, of which the later 30-year claim is similar in genre (intended to incriminate Oswald on Tippit). But never mind that—30 years is time for honest witnesses to confuse details in memory. Anyone who has a grandfather who likes to tell stories of the past knows that. It isn’t dishonesty, it’s fallibility in human recall and narrative construction with the passage of time.

What to you tipped the 1990s Barrett claim from a status of initial uncertainty and justified skepticism (because: sensational; new 30 years later) to conviction or confidence that his claim was true, in terms of positive evidence (not “it could be true” argument, but what you saw as positive evidence that it was true)? What says to you: other 30 years-later stories solely dependent on witness claims with no physical evidence [referring in this case to Oswald ID at the crime scene, not existence of a wallet] are urban legends. What tilted you to conclude this case was different; this witness was not only honest but also accurately honest, in this claim first made public or known made privately either, 30 years after the fact? A question of self-examination of epistemology—why do we come to think we know what we think we know?

[Michael T. Griffith]

I did not realize you were proposing a crime scene wallet might be the one turned in later as the Oswald wallet in evidence, and not the one said to have been taken from Oswald in the car.

In my previous posts I made it clear enough that this was a possibility.

Let's examine what we actually know;

Hill and Bentley were sitting on either side of Oswald on the back seat of the car, when Hill asked Bentley to look for identification. Bentley found a wallet and, according to Hill, mentioned Lee Oswald. Not a word about Hidell by any of the officers in the car until Hill, during his WC testimony on April 8, 1964, vaguely remembers another name, which could have been Hidell, was also mentioned in the car. There is not a single report (including the one filed by Bentley on 11/22/63) that actually mentions an Hidell ID being found in that wallet.

On the other hand we have FBI agent Barrett who not only clearly states that Westbrook was holding a wallet and asked him about Hidell and Oswald at the Tippit crime scene but also called the suggestion that the wallet with the Hidell ID in it was taken from Oswald in the car, "hogwash".

This is were it gets complicated. When the car arrived at City Hall, Bentley went to the homicide bureau to write a report (the one in which he does not mention Hidell!) before being taken to the hospital. What happened to the wallet that Bentley has is anybody's guess. Bentley writes in his report that he gave the identification to Lt. Baker, after he had initialed the revolver together with Hill. The problem is that, according to Hill, that happened at around 4:00 PM. And then we have officer Walker who had been at the Tippit crime scene, who claims in his WC testimony that when Oswald was brought into the homicide bureau (at around 1:15 PM , IIRC) he (Walker) had the revolver and the Hidell identification.

So, now we turn to Guy Rose, who had been called in and arrived just as Oswald was being brought in. He was the first officer to talk to Oswald and just before that happened an unidentified patrol officer gave him a wallet and told him it belonged to the suspect. That's the wallet in which Rose found the Hidell ID.

So, here is the discrepancy; if Bentley gave the wallet to Lt Baker at around 4:00 PM, how could Rose have had it at just past 1:00 PM when he talked to Oswald and how could the wallet containing the Hidell ID be submitted to the evidence room at 3:35 PM.

Do you understand the problem now?

But may I ask, are you meaning this as evidence Oswald was present at the crime scene with Hidell ID?

No. It's only potential evidence that a wallet containing the Oswald and Hidell ID was at the Tippit crime scene. How it got there is anybody's guess.

Do you think Oswald shot Tippit?

What I think is not really important, but since you asked; I think it's a mistake to jump to conclusions.

It all comes down to opportunity and motive. Could Oswald have arrived at 10th street in time to kill Tippit? What was he even doing there? And if he shot Tippit to evade arrest why not leave after Tippit was down? Why go back and shoot him in the head to ensure he was dead? It doesn't make sense to me. The coup the grace shot is a complete mystery to me.

Do you think he accidentally dropped his wallet at the scene, or handed his wallet to Tippit?

I have no idea. Once again, you assume that it was Oswald himself who carried that wallet but we don't know that.

30 years later for a first mention of something that would be expected memorable from the beginning is the key fact making this urban legend genre.

I've already said this once before. What if Barrett, for 30 years, had no knowledge there was even a problem with the wallet until he talked to Hosty? Vicki Adams wasn't heard from for decades because she wasn't aware what the WC had said about her reliablity or lack thereof. As the case was closed in 1964, Barrett, like most people, would have gotten on with his life and most likely never had a reason to second guess the WC report.

This Oswald wallet at the crime scene very parallel to the Mike Howard claim. They’re both equally unbelievable and for exactly parallel reasons.

No. The wallet story has footage showing it being held at the Tippit scene. There's also circumstantial evidence to support the possibility of wallets being switched.

The only reason for you to call them both unbelievable is that you don't want to believe them. It is as simple as that.

I think Greg is just being too cautious, and not because he doesn't want to believe them. Greg's extreme caution makes it all the more important when he concludes that an item of evidence supports the conspiracy view.

I agree that plenty of witnesses did not come forward until many years later because they simply did not realize the importance of their information. Hosty and Barett were both "hostile witnesses."

My bottom line is that I simply cannot believe it's just a cosmic coincidence that a wallet was found next to Tippit's car.

I also find it very hard to believe that someone as intelligent as Oswald would have been abjectly stupid enough to be walking around with a fake Hidell ID in his wallet after supposedly shooting JFK with a rifle ordered by an "A. Hidell." I mean, come on. If this isn't a case of crucial evidence being far too pat, I don't know what would be.

[Lance Payette]

It all comes down to opportunity and motive. Could Oswald have arrived at 10th street in time to kill Tippit? What was he even doing there? And if he shot Tippit to evade arrest why not leave after Tippit was down? Why go back and shoot him in the head to ensure he was dead? It doesn't make sense to me. The coup the grace shot is a complete mystery to me.

This is a genuine puzzle to me as well. The LN narrative presumably would be "He wanted to be sure Tippit was dead and couldn't get to his radio." But since there were several witnesses, this scarcely seems compelling. The close-range coup de grace is the sort of thing we hear all the time that supposedly suggests some sort of prior relationship and personal rage.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

This is a genuine puzzle to me as well. The LN narrative presumably would be "He wanted to be sure Tippit was dead and couldn't get to his radio." But since there were several witnesses, this scarcely seems compelling. The close-range coup de grace is the sort of thing we hear all the time that supposedly suggests some sort of prior relationship and personal rage.

The autopsy found no "powder tattooing" at the margins of the head wounds.

Rose's autopsy report here: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338568/m1/9/

"Gunshot stippling and tattooing are patterns of tiny skin injuries left by gunpowder particles when a firearm discharges at close range. These marks help forensic examiners estimate the distance between the muzzle and the target, reconstruct the angle of fire, and determine whether the wound occurred before or after death. For attorneys on either side of a criminal case, the presence or absence of these patterns often drives the narrative: a close-range shot tells a very different story than a distant one, and getting the interpretation wrong can mean the difference between a conviction and an acquittal."

Source/link: https://legalclarity.org/gunshot-stippling-and-tattooing-range-of-fire-and-court-use/

From Myers:

[John Corbett]

It all comes down to opportunity and motive. Could Oswald have arrived at 10th street in time to kill Tippit?

Yes.

What was he even doing there?

He never told us. It's a little late to ask him now.

And if he shot Tippit to evade arrest why not leave after Tippit was down? Why go back and shoot him in the head to ensure he was dead? It doesn't make sense to me. The coup the grace shot is a complete mystery to me.

It doesn't need to make sense to you. It made sense to Oswald. He was calling the shots in this episode.

This is a logical fallacy CTs often fall into. They can't understand why Oswald made the decisions he did and did the things he did. They put themselves in Oswald's shoes and think they wouldn't have done that. That's nice but irrelevant. Oswald did the things he thought was best for him. It doesn't matter if it makes sense to anybody but him.
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