MORE WALLET TALK:
Repeating an important quote by Vincent Bugliosi regarding this topic of the mystery surrounding the wallet on Tenth Street:
"One thing we can be reasonably certain about: the wallet was not Oswald’s. .... Furthermore, a Dallas police officer had just been slain. It is inconceivable that members of the Dallas Police Department like Captains Westbrook and Doughty and Sergeant Hill would suppress and keep secret the fact that Tippit’s killer had left his calling card at the murder scene. That simply would not, could not, have happened. If Oswald’s wallet had been found at the murder scene, it is inconceivable that nowhere in the testimony or the reports of Westbrook, Hill, Doughty, Poe, and so on, would they bother to mention this extremely important fact." -- Vincent Bugliosi
I couldn't agree more with the above words spoken by Mr. Bugliosi in his book, "Reclaiming History".
Along those same lines, here's something else to consider:
There are many conspiracy theorists who think that the wallet seen in Ron Reiland's WFAA-TV film footage was "planted" on Tenth Street by evil conspirators in order to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for Officer J.D. Tippit's murder.
One such conspiracy theorist is James DiEugenio, who was talking about Oswald's alleged "three wallets" during his appearance on the "Black Op Radio" program that first aired on December 24, 2009.
But do people like Jim DiEugenio actually want to believe that the Dallas Police Department, after having found a wallet on 10th Street that some conspiracists think was planted there by either the DPD or somebody else, would have NOT SAID A WORD about finding Oswald's wallet in any of their police reports?
And keep in mind that the Dallas Police Department is an organization that DiEugenio and other conspiracy theorists certainly think was trying to railroad and frame an innocent Lee Oswald for Tippit's murder!
And yet the DPD says absolutely NOTHING in any of their official reports about finding a wallet near Tippit's body that belonged to the person the DPD later arrested and charged with the murder of Tippit??
That's just nuts, folks!
If the cops (or whoever) had actually planted the wallet on Tenth Street to incriminate Lee Oswald, then the DPD would certainly have been propping up that wallet for everybody to see!
The fact that NO POLICE REPORT mentions anything about a wallet being found near Tippit's body is, all by itself, proof that the wallet that is seen in Ron Reiland's TV film is not Lee Harvey Oswald's wallet.
And even conspiracy theorists like Jim DiEugenio (who thinks the DPD was up to its collective necks in conspiracy and plotting and planting evidence all over Dallas on 11/22/63) should realize the built-in common sense and truth that exists in the last sentence I just wrote above.
BTW, one of those "three" Oswald wallets that DiEugenio was talking about is a wallet that Oswald was known to keep his "savings" in (vs. his regular wallet that he carried with him every day). That fact is proven by way of Marina Oswald's Warren Commission testimony below:
MARINA OSWALD -- "In my room at Ruth Paine's there was a black wallet in a wardrobe. Whenever Lee would come he would put money in there, but I never counted it." [1 H 69]
In addition to the above Warren Commission testimony, the "spare wallet" fact is confirmed in another official document as well -- a November 28, 1963, FBI interview with Marina Oswald (which is part of CE1781):
"She [Marina] said [Lee] OSWALD had a wallet which he kept in the apartment in New Orleans with this money that he was saving." [CE1781; at 23 H 387]
And since we know beyond all reasonable doubt that the wallet seen in Ron Reiland's film is not Oswald's wallet, the final tally of wallets known to be owned by Lee Harvey Oswald on 11/22/63 is two -- his regular wallet that he carried with him (which was removed from Oswald's pocket by police immediately after his arrest), plus the wallet that he used to store larger sums of cash.
Mr. DiEugenio seems to be travelling deeper and deeper into the "outer fringe" areas in his conspiracy beliefs concerning the JFK case. Every time I hear him speak these days, it seems as though he's latched on to another crazy conspiracy theory that has already been debunked long ago.
I wouldn't be surprised to find DiEugenio soon announcing that he is endorsing the insane theories of Douglas "Two Brains" Horne.
David Von Pein
December 2009
