Lee Oswald The Cop Killer

[Matt Grantham]

My comment wasn't directed at you, Matt.

 Ok Bill Looking back not sure why I assumed that so pardon the somewhat snarky response I am in some hard meds ,and am a bit off my already questionable game

[Mitch Todd]

Mitch Are you saying recording the time of events such as these are not significant, or the difficulty in establishing them is unduly difficult?

First off, the arrest is self-evident, no matter how accurate the cops' reports are at recording when it went down. I get this vibe that someone wants to argue that somehow Oswald wasn't actually arrested at the Texas Theatre based on some faulty time stamping. I've already sarcasticised all over some other poor soul over this.

Second, how accurate do you expect them to be? Did the cops think to look at their watch during the arrest? I kinda doubt it. They had other things to do.

Plus, there's something else to remember, and it's good to remember no matter what part of the assassination you study. 1963 was in an era before clocks automatically set themselves to super-accurate stratum 1 time sources via radio. It was also before quartz movement timekeeping made it out of the R&D lab. In those days you were lucky or rich if you had a watch that didn't lose a couple of minutes a day. In fact,  it's reasonable to assume that any clock in those days could be as much as 5 minutes of of sync with UTC, and any two clocks could be as much as ten minutes apart. People either forget that, or never lived in such primitive conditions. BTW, I was always told that's the underlying reason for the old advice to be 10 minutes early to any appointment. You never knew when the other guy's watch was five minutes fast, and yours was 5 minutes slow.

[Matt Grantham]

If he wasn't at the scene during the arrest, how accurate can you expect him to be? At best, all he can offer is a second-hand account.

More importantly, the reports I referenced in the Dallas city archives are from the officers who were involved in the arrest. How many of those say that the arrest went down in the balcony?

 Since you frame the issue of "the arrest" I assume those reports refer to the arrest of the Oswald downstairs, so of course they do not pertain to any other arrests detainment's, etc

[Matt Grantham]

There were a total of five Oswald wallets: a black plastic wallet (CE 1798); a red billfold found at Ruth Paine's (CE 2003 #382); a brown billfold found at Ruth Paine's (CE 2003 #114); a billfold taken from LHO upon arrest--initialed by HMM (Henry Moore), wallet and contents inventoried and photographed; and the Westbrook wallet, which was not initialed by police, not listed in inventory, not photographed, not mentioned by a single witness to the FBI, WC, HSCA, ARRB, etc. and disappeared, but not before it was filmed by WFAA TV and seen by FBI agent Barrett.

[Mitch Todd]

Since you frame the issue of "the arrest" I assume those reports refer to the arrest of the Oswald downstairs, so of course they do not pertain to any other arrests detainment's, etc

Those are the "what I did during Oswald's arrest" reports. I referenced them primarily to address the issue of whether Oswald had been arrested in the balcony. IIRC, the reports mention driving a witness downtown to make a statement. That may be what Brewer [correction: not Brewer but Borroughs] and the other guy thought was an arrest. I can see why the cops would want to take him out the back door, given the reaction of the crowd out front to Oswald. You never know what some fool pumped up on a combination of ignorance and indignation might do to a witness if they assumed he was a perp.

[Tim Nickerson]

There were a total of five Oswald wallets: a black plastic wallet (CE 1798); a red billfold found at Ruth Paine's (CE 2003 #382); a brown billfold found at Ruth Paine's (CE 2003 #114); a billfold taken from LHO upon arrest--initialed by HMM (Henry Moore), wallet and contents inventoried and photographed; and the Westbrook wallet, which was not initialed by police, not listed in inventory, not photographed, not mentioned by a single witness to the FBI, WC, HSCA, ARRB, etc. and disappeared, but not before it was filmed by WFAA TV and seen by FBI agent Barrett.

There was no "Westbrook wallet". That wallet was a figment of Barrett's imagination 3 decades after the fact. A few of Barrett's recollections made in the 90s and later are demonstrably false or inaccurate. That's not to say that Barrett was dishonest. His memory was faulty , that's all. Humes put it  best during his ARRB testimony when he said "That's part of the problem with all of this, temporal distortion of memory and what have you, accentuated when you get 35 years away."

[Mitch Todd]

[...] the Westbrook wallet, which was not initialed by police, not listed in inventory, not photographed, not mentioned by a single witness to the FBI, WC, HSCA, ARRB, etc. and disappeared, but not before it was filmed by WFAA TV and seen by FBI agent Barrett.

We don't know whose wallet is in the WFAA film. The Barrett wallet is a 30+ year after the fact memory, and one filtered through someone else.

That leaves you with  "not initialed by police, not listed in inventory, not photographed, not mentioned by a single witness to the FBI, WC, HSCA, ARRB, etc." which is a pretty good way of saying that it never existed in the first place.