JFK Assassination Forum

Tge time pieces that Markham and Bowley relied on were never compared with a reference or were even read/transcribed coorectly.

Humm, well, the previous supposedly definitive analysis of the timing of the Tippit shooting, i.e., Dale Myers' "stop-watch" analysis in his book With Malice, says that Oswald did not have time to walk to 10th and Patton in time to shoot Tippit and theorizes that Oswald got a ride from an unknown person. Myers says Tippit was shot at 1:14:30, but you say he was shot between 1:15 and 1:16.

Is there a reason you failed to mention that T. F. Bowley said he arrived at the Tippit scene at 1:10 and that he knew this because he checked his watch when he got there? That's an important fact to omit, wouldn't you say?

Is there a reason you failed to mention that Helen Markham said she got to the Tippit scene no later than 1:08 and that Tippit had already been shot when she arrived? This is why she was certain Tippit was shot at 1:06 or 1:07. Markham said she always left her apartment at 1:00 to catch her regular 1:12-1:15 bus. She said she glanced at the laundry room clock after she left her apartment and that it read 1:04. She said it took her about two minutes to reach 10th and Patton.

Is there a reason you failed to mention that Domingo Benavides said that he did not try to use the police car's radio until "a few minutes" after Tippit had been shot because he was (quite understandably) afraid for his life?

You guys claim that Benavides waited in his truck for only a matter of seconds and not for a few minutes. But this flies in the face of common sense and ignores what Benavides himself initially said. If you were only 25-50 feet away from a shooting and feared you could be the next target, how long would you wait until coming out into the open? Nobody in their right mind would have come out of hiding so quickly in that situation.

Benavides told the WC he waited in his truck for "a few minutes" after he heard the shots and before he tried to use the police car's radio. Moreover, according to fellow witness Ted Calloway, Benavides told him the day after the shooting that

When I heard that shooting, I fell down into the floorboard of my truck and I stayed there. It scared me to death.

Years later, Benavides changed his story and told CBS he only waited a few seconds, not a few minutes. Predictably, you guys choose to accept Benavides' belated change of story and reject his original statements.

Two witnesses at the Texas Theatre, Butch Borroughs and Jack Davis, independently said that Oswald entered the theater before 1:10, and that he remained in the theater until he was arrested.

You place great emphasis on the police dispatch transcripts, but even Dr. Paul Hoch, one of the most careful scholars in the JFKA research community, acknowledged there is evidence the police dispatch tapes were edited, which renders the transcripts useless for determining when Tippit was shot. BTW, Dr. Hoch doubted the authenticity of the transmissions that supposedly explain why Tippit was in Oak Cliff in the first place, far out of his area.

I discuss Dr. Hoch's research at length in my article "Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?," available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_j_022lJYli3B5Xyw8wLs-0nl6mDLo2t/view.

Is there a reason you failed to mention that T. F. Bowley said he arrived at the Tippit scene at 1:10 and that he knew this because he checked his watch when he got there? That's an important fact to omit, wouldn't you say?

Is there a reason you failed to mention that Helen Markham said she got to the Tippit scene no later than 1:08 and that Tippit had already been shot when she arrived? This is why she was certain Tippit was shot at 1:06 or 1:07. Markham said she always left her apartment at 1:00 to catch her regular 1:12-1:15 bus. She said she glanced at the laundry room clock after she left her apartment and that it read 1:04. She said it took her about two minutes to reach 10th and Patton.

First, there is no such thing as Markham's "1:12-1:15 bus".  Nice try, though.  Intellectually dishonest much?

Second, the statements of witnesses like Mary Wright and Ted Callaway combined with the verbal time stamps on the police tapes tell us that Bowley's watch was wrong and Markham was at that corner much later than 1:07.

You guys claim that Benavides waited in his truck for only a matter of seconds and not for a few minutes. But this flies in the face of common sense and ignores what Benavides himself initially said. If you were only 25-50 feet away from a shooting and feared you could be the next target, how long would you wait until coming out into the open? Nobody in their right mind would have come out of hiding so quickly in that situation.

So your "common sense" tells you that Benavides was cowering down inside his truck while little old ladies were tending to Tippit and others were gathering around the squad car?

Two witnesses at the Texas Theatre, Butch Borroughs and Jack Davis, independently said that Oswald entered the theater before 1:10, and that he remained in the theater until he was arrested.

Nonsense.  First, Jack Davis certainly does NOT state that Oswald entered the theater before 1:10.  Ooops, you're a naughty Boy.

Secondly, Burroughs testified to the Warren Commission in 1964 that he didn't see Oswald enter the theater and he also stated that, during the search of the theater, a police officer came up to him and asked him if he had seen the guy and Burroughs told the officer that he had not seen him himself.

Sorry, but this story perfectly illustrates the point. People who want something other than a straight forward explanation will seize on every little anomaly to claim things aren't what they seem. Everyone in the house that night had been drinking heavily, including Reeves. He went upstairs and a short time later, the people downstairs heard the gunshot. They immediately went upstairs and found Reeves lying on the bed with a gun at his feet. There was no evidence to indicate this was anything but a suicide. Not surprisingly, the inebriated witnesses didn't recall the evening in the same way but that's hardly an indication of anything but that this was a suicide. It's people trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

The Guardian article made some silly claims. One was that the $2500 a week Reevers made for 13 weeks wasn't much to live on for a whole year. In 1953, you could live large on $32,500 a year. That equates to over $400K in today's money. The show ran for six seasons so Reeves should have had a good chunk of change saved up. Other than he Superman series, Reeves had not exactly been an accomplished actor. He did have minor roles in two  of the biggest movies of all time, Gone With the Wind and From Here to Eternity. He did a number of guest roles on other TV programs during the 1950s and was a semi-regular performer on the Kraft Theater, but producers weren't exactly beating down his door to offer him work. His last credited role other than Superman was a guest spot on I Love Lucy in 1957.

Nobody will know why Reeves took his own life. There are lots of reasons people resort to suicide and they aren't always about career failures or fractured relationships although either of these could have played role in Reeves decision. We'll never know.

Now you know why John C. is an LN zealot. The entire world is black and white with no nuances. No wonder he and MTG go at it - they are peas in a pod. Read The Guardian article for yourself and see if it sounds open-and-shut to you.

The article doesn't suggest Reeves had money problems. Yes, at the peak of popularity of Superman, he was making the equivalent of $400K today - not exactly Milton Berle, I guarantee you. He had ongoing salary beefs with the production company. The point was that he was limited in his ability to work on other projects and was pretty solidly typecast by playing Superman and thus was unable to leverage his popularity into serious money.

The coroner's autopsy took place only after the corpse had been thoroughly washed. It failed to test for powder traces on Reeves' hand and, even though the top of Reeves' skull was removed, no one checked the head wound for gunpowder traces, which would have been present if he'd shot himself at close range. Nothing explained the bruises on the corpse's face and chest. Reeves showed no signs of a suicidal demeanour, left no note and died naked - extremely unusual for a suicide.

Other mysterious bullet holes were found in the house. Two were in the floor, with one bullet lodged in the wall of the downstairs living room. Lemmon claimed they'd got there after she fired the gun in an argument with Reeves. Lemmon's volatile nature and Vesuvian temper tantrums have long made her a prime suspect in projected murder scenarios, but here again there is no satisfactory evidence. She did however claim, 30 years later to a young reporter when she was in her declining years in New York, that Bliss had concocted her step-by-step "predictions" of Reeves' suicide. Her subsequent flight from the law is as readily explained by what was already known of her routinely scandalous behaviour as by any imponderable motive she may have had for bumping off Superman. Still, we might plausibly picture some stupid drunken argument over the gun, and a fatal, albeit accidental discharge. The weapon, however, was too recently oiled to retain fingerprints, hers or his.

Reeves also had his new girlfriend, Leonore - a piece of work, to be sure, but lots of fun - and a holiday, if not a "honeymoon", had been arranged and was eagerly anticipated. He had been drinking heavily on the night he died, but he had the constitution of an elephant: drink never seemed to affect him anyway. The shell-casing found beneath his body suggested certain realities of ballistics not reconcilable with a verdict of suicide.


Hmmm ... sound "just a bit" like any other case you can think of? Maybe it's just me.

We've known when Connally was hit for over 60 years now. He was hit at Z234. We know this from Connally himself. After viewing the Zapruder film in slow motion several times, he told the WC he wasn't hit before Z230. In 1966, LIFE magazine allowed him to study a high-quality print of the Zapruder film under high magnification. After doing so for some time, Connally reached two key conclusions:

1. He was certain he was not hit before Z229.

2. He identified Z234 as the moment of impact.

Connally had valid reasons for selecting Z234 as the moment of impact. Starting in Z238 his right shoulder rapidly collapses, his cheeks puff, and a pained expression appears on his face. The right-shoulder collapse matches Connally's earliest descriptions of the bullet's impact: he said the impact felt like someone hit him powerfully in the back with their first.

A Z234 hit makes perfect sense with what we see in the Zapruder film. It makes total sense that a bullet that hit Connally in the back would only take four Zapruder frames--4/18ths of a second or 218.4 milliseconds--to drive his right shoulder downward. 218.4 milliseconds is in the range of the speed of an eye blink. Eye-blink speed ranges between 100 and 400 milliseconds.

Similarly, the forced expulsion of air from Connally's lungs would have been quite rapid and forceful, quickly causing his cheeks to puff, just as we see in the Zapruder film virtually simultaneously with his right-shoulder drop. The cheeks start to puff just a frame or two after the right shoulder starts to drop.

Also, the shattering of 4 inches of rib bone alone was extremely painful and would have quickly caused a pained expression to appear on Connally's face. Forensic science tells us that when people experience a sharp pain, it only takes 150-300 milliseconds to react with a pained facial expression.

Jim Moore, one of the most honest WC defenders around, concludes that Connally was hit at Z236 and he basis this partly on the rapid collapse of Connally's right shoulder starting in Z238 (Conspiracy of One, pp. 198-199, see also p. 159, where he says that Connally's right shoulder "drops dramatically").

Obviously, these reactions make no sense in a Z224-hit scenario. It most would not have taken Connally's right shoulder 14 frames to begin to be driven downward, nor would it have taken 14 frames for Connally to react with a pained facial expression and for his cheeks to puff.

It is worth noting that Dr. Robert Shaw, Connally's chest surgeon, studied the Zapruder film and concluded the bullet struck the Governor at Z236, "give or take 1 or 2 frames, and that Dr. Charles Gregory, Connally's wrist surgeon, opined that the hit occurred between Z234 and Z238.

But, of course, WC defenders here cannot accept the fact that Connally was not hit before Z229 because it destroys any version of their untenable Z220-224 SBT.

To follow up on this, I should add that when Connally examined the Zapruder film for LIFE magazine in 1966, he did so frame by frame--not in slow motion, but frame by frame--and, again, he did so while viewing a high-quality print of the film and under high magnification.

In the 1990s, a few lone-gunman theorists, led by Robert Piziali and Gerald Posner, sowed confusion with their claim that Connally's lapel magically flips up and down in Z224, i.e., in the space of 55 milliseconds. Apparently they never bothered to ask themselves whether a lapel can flip up and down in 55 milliseconds. Anyway, since then, the lapel flip has been debunked and is probably an optical illusion.

https://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-faqs/governor-john-connally-lapel-flap

JFK and Connally could not have reacted to a hit at Z224 until at least 4 frames later, a fact that Dr. John Lattimer acknowledged before he later jumped on the Z224-lapel-flip bandwagon. Lattimer originally put the SBT hit at Z221 because he acknowledged that JFK could not have reacted with reflexive movement until 4 frames after being hit, but this inconvenient fact flew out the window when he embraced the Z224-lapel-flip theory.

Piziali admitted under cross examination in the 1992 ABA mock Oswald trial that there would have been a delay of 4 frames, or about 200 milliseconds, between the bullet's impact and Kennedy's reaction to it with his right hand, because that is the fastest a human can move his hand or arm in a reflex reaction to a bullet wound.

The amount of straining and grasping to uphold the SBT shows up in the argument that Connally's stiffening and frowning in Z224-230 was in response to being wounded. If a bullet had torn through Connally's chest at Z224, smashing 4 inches of rib bone in the process, he would have done a lot more than just stiffen and frown. He suddenly stiffened and frowned because, as he himself noted, he had just heard a gunshot and was naturally tense and concerned about it. When you hear a loud bang that startles you, you will tense up and look concerned. Connally himself did not see his Z224-230 stiffening as a wound reaction, because it obviously wasn't. He insisted he was not hit before Z229.

Well, hell, let's beat this to death. Both MTG and John C. are obviously uninformed about the Reeves case. Actually, in its own little way, it's practically a mini-JFKA. Truly, read the article in The Guardian and tell me this was an "open and shut suicide." Ironically, John C. could scarcely have picked a better story to illustrate precisely the opposite of the point he thought he was making.

Sorry, but this story perfectly illustrates the point. People who want something other than a straight forward explanation will seize on every little anomaly to claim things aren't what they seem. Everyone in the house that night had been drinking heavily, including Reeves. He went upstairs and a short time later, the people downstairs heard the gunshot. They immediately went upstairs and found Reeves lying on the bed with a gun at his feet. There was no evidence to indicate this was anything but a suicide. Not surprisingly, the inebriated witnesses didn't recall the evening in the same way but that's hardly an indication of anything but that this was a suicide. It's people trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

The Guardian article made some silly claims. One was that the $2500 a week Reevers made for 13 weeks wasn't much to live on for a whole year. In 1953, you could live large on $32,500 a year. That equates to over $400K in today's money. The show ran for six seasons so Reeves should have had a good chunk of change saved up. Other than he Superman series, Reeves had not exactly been an accomplished actor. He did have minor roles in two  of the biggest movies of all time, Gone With the Wind and From Here to Eternity. He did a number of guest roles on other TV programs during the 1950s and was a semi-regular performer on the Kraft Theater, but producers weren't exactly beating down his door to offer him work. His last credited role other than Superman was a guest spot on I Love Lucy in 1957.

Nobody will know why Reeves took his own life. There are lots of reasons people resort to suicide and they aren't always about career failures or fractured relationships although either of these could have played role in Reeves decision. We'll never know.