JONATHAN W. HALLMAN SAID:
Mr. Von Pein:
Thank you for maintaining your JFK assassination blogs. They show meticulous care and research. The evidence showing Oswald’s guilt is substantial, you have done a masterful job in organizing it all.
But I have been unable to find research or facts supporting how Oswald transported his rifle in his attempt on Gen. Walker. How did Oswald get the rifle across Dallas when he has no car or drivers license? This points to conspiracy in my opinion with regard to the Walker shot, which then confuses me because -- if he acted in consort then, why would he not be in consort in his later successful assassination attempt with regard to JFK?
So many conspiracy theories are laughable. But I say it becomes just as laughable to suppose that Oswald hitchhiked, walked, or took the bus with his rifle to get to Walker’s house to pull off his shot. Such a thing demands that he was driven, which then demands he acted in consort with a driver. Plus, he then needed to get back home with the rifle so he could use it later. This again demands transportation, which obviously required a car.
Is there a section of your blog that can clarify this issue for me? It is deeply confusing to me since, like you, I do believe in Oswald’s guilt.
Regards,
Jon Hallman
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Hi Jon,
It's impossible, of course, to prove with 100% certainty that Oswald was working alone when he shot at General Edwin Walker in April of '63. But there is certainly nothing concrete to indicate that any other person aided Oswald in that crime.
In fact, if you look at Marina Oswald's testimony [at 1 H 16], you'll see that she said that Lee told her that he had "buried" the rifle someplace after taking the shot at Walker. And why would Lee bury the gun if he had a helper to drive him to and from the scene of the crime? That doesn't add up at all.
Also:
In Priscilla Johnson's book, it's revealed through conversations with Marina that Lee had apparently said something to Marina to this effect after the Walker shooting:
"Those dumb cops. They think you always need a car to escape. But I got away on my own two feet."
I'm sorry you couldn't find what you needed to know on my websites. I have covered aspects of the Walker shooting in various places on my sites [e.g., HERE, HERE, and HERE], but it's been kind of scattered throughout the articles. I've never really delved too deeply into the idea that Oswald had a co-conspirator in the Walker shooting, mainly because I think the evidence indicates otherwise (including Marina's very important testimony).
Conspiracy theorists who want to exonerate Oswald for the Walker crime too (and many do desire to do that) have no choice but to believe Marina was telling a bunch of lies to the Warren Commission and other people about the Walker incident. But that notion is just balderdash, in my opinion. Marina even told author Vincent Bugliosi as late as November of 2000 that Lee had told her that he shot at Walker.
But, of course, the Walker shooting technically does remain unsolved, so the possibility of Oswald having an accomplice, however unlikely, cannot be ruled out entirely. And the same can be said in the JFK murder too. It's impossible to say for certainty that Oswald didn't have a co-plotter in that case either, although the way things unfolded just after JFK was shot make it very hard for me to believe in even a smaller two-man plot, mainly because Oswald's means of escape from the Book Depository were: a bus, a cab, and his own two feet. If he had a helper, that helper sure was useless when Lee needed him the most, wasn't he?
There's also this passage from the HSCA regarding the Walker shooting:
"With respect to the Walker shooting, reports of the Dallas Police Department, made at the time of the shooting and referred to in the Warren Report, reflected that there was one witness who stated he saw more than one person leaving the scene after the shooting. Another witness, according to police reports, stated he saw two men, two nights before the shooting, driving in the vicinity of the Walker house in a suspicious manner. These statements were never substantiated, and the case remains unsolved. Nevertheless, if they are true, a possible implication is that Oswald had associates who would engage in a conspiracy to commit murder. The committee conducted a limited investigation to see if leads could be developed that might assist in identifying these possible associates. No leads were developed, and this line of inquiry was abandoned." -- HSCA Report; Page 61 (footnote)
Regards,
David Von Pein
JON HALLMAN SAID:
Thanks, Dave, for such a thorough and prompt reply.
The Walker shooting remains problematic to me in that it strikes me as unlikely that Oswald could have buried his rifle without a shovel – and that he could then pull off such an accurate set of shots at Kennedy (albeit with one miss) after exhuming it from the burial.
But setting that aside, I still find it very curious to suppose that Oswald walked with his gun to and from the Walker shooting. Such a proposition does not seem well thought out to me. He surely did not walk with that gun to the TSBD, he got a ride. But I am then to believe that he walked the rifle over to the Walker shooting. I just have a hard time buying that. I suppose it is within the realm of possible, but common sense tells me otherwise. And if he is conspiring then, it makes me wonder why he would not be conspiring later.
Regards,
Jon Hallman
JON HALLMAN LATER SAID:
Hi Dave:
I work at a Dallas-based firm so our firm retreats every year are in Dallas. This year one of the entertainment choices was a tour of the Kennedy museum. Given that I was visiting the museum, I was web-browsing and found your blog. It was quite a find, you have a truly excellent collection of videos and materials. I congratulate you again!
Having read a great deal on your blogs, I was well prepared for the museum tour. The firm paid for a tour guide who then took us to Oswald’s boarding house. Although nearly 50 years have gone by, that house looks like Oswald could have just stepped out of it – quite surprising to me since it is still privately owned without any official preservation. Here in California, they would have razed the place and put up a McMansion.
We then went to the Tippit killing street corner (now changed quite a bit unlike the boarding house). We then went to the Texas Theatre, which looks to be straight out of 1963.
Being a fan of your blogs, I found our tour guide a bit amusing since he was an avid conspiracy buff with more shooters than you could shake a stick at. So I found him to be misguided, if well-intentioned.
But what bothered me at that time was the distance between Oswald’s boarding house and the Tippit killing. It is said to be 0.9 miles, but that bus drove straight there block after block after block: the distance surprised me. That man had to be close to jogging to cover that distance in the approximately 10 minutes allowed to him by the facts. The distance from the shooting to the Texas Theatre also surprised me.
What also bothered me was – where could Oswald be going? What could he possibly thought he was going to do with the few dollars he had and on foot?
So this trip to Dallas got me wondering about the lone assassin theory. What then really bothered me is the Walker shooting – I will have to research the distance between where Oswald was staying in April of 1963 and Walker’s house. Given the considerable sprawl of Dallas, I would guess it was a solid 5 miles plus. How did he walk that far with a high-powered rifle that long without arousing some police inquiries? I suppose lots of folks have rifles in Dallas, but even in 1963 I say that it would raise eyebrows to casually walk around in public with one.
Regards,
Jon Hallman
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Greetings once again Jon,
You have raised some more good points.
Another thing to consider when discussing the Walker incident is that Oswald might very well have placed the rifle in some kind of container as he walked to General Walker's house. Which, of course, he also did when he wrapped the rifle up in a paper bag on November 22. It stands to reason that he probably wouldn't want to walk down the street with a fully-exposed rifle in his hands, even if it was dark outside.
Now, whether or not any such perceived rifle-toting container was big enough to hold the assembled Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (vs. the need to break the weapon down into pieces, like Oswald did on 11/22/63) can never be known. Mr. Oswald, unfortunately, wasn't kind enough to tell us that he shot at Walker before meeting his Maker on November 24. So some things will forever remain unknown and uncertain.
Here's another thing to consider (if only in a small way) relating to Oswald's guilt and the Walker shooting:
Given the huge publicity that surrounded Lee Oswald following JFK's murder, and given the fact that shortly after Kennedy's death, it was made known to the public that Oswald had likely taken that shot at Edwin Walker (plus the Warren Commission's 1964 conclusions regarding Oswald's probable guilt in the Walker incident) -- I'm just wondering why there haven't been at least a couple of people to step forward and seek the limelight to say that they themselves had conspired with Oswald to try and kill Walker, or (even more likely) to say that they had personal first-hand knowledge that Oswald did not act alone in the Walker shooting.
In the JFK case, publicity seekers and "new assassins" come popping up out of the woodwork every few years or so. But I don't think I've heard of one such "confession" or bombshell witness who claimed to have details about a Walker conspiracy connected with Lee Harvey Oswald (or even a theory which has Oswald as a NON-participant altogether, which is the theory that a lot of the Internet conspiracy junkies seem to want to believe; they don't think Oswald was anywhere near Walker's house on April 10th of '63).
Anyway, just some food for thought.
Re: "Where Was Oswald Going?":
There are different schools of thought on that, with one theory being that Oswald was on his way to General Walker's house (again) to finish the job on the General that LHO failed to complete in April. An interesting theory too, and it could possibly be an accurate one. But, of course, nobody can know for sure.
Another theory was authored by (I think) David Belin in his 1973 book. Although somebody else before Belin might have spoken about this theory too. The theory is that Oswald was on his way to a specific bus stop in Oak Cliff which would take him south, toward Mexico. Oswald, remember, only had a limited amount of time to use that bus transfer that he got from Cecil McWatters on Elm Street. He just might have had it in mind to use that transfer to travel further south through Texas, and then possibly down to Mexico. He certainly had enough money to buy another bus ticket. But, again, it's just pure speculation.
If only Oswald had lived. Maybe then more of these questions would have been answered.
Re: The distance between 1026 Beckley and 10th & Patton:
You're right, it is nine-tenths of a mile. (Actually, to be technical, the Warren Commission lists it as being slightly less, at 0.85 of a mile.) And that route HAS been re-created by several independent researchers and has been done in as little as 11 minutes.
The one thing that pretty much guarantees that Oswald could, indeed, have travelled the distance to Tenth Street on 11/22/63 is the fact that we know (via the observations of several witnesses) that Oswald was in that area of Tenth Street and Patton Avenue just seconds after Officer Tippit was shot.
I put this question to conspiracy theorist Jim DiEugenio at an online forum and got no reply at all--probably because Jimmy knew he'd look like an idiot if he continued to insist that Oswald couldn't have made it to Tenth Street in time. The question I posed to DiEugenio was essentially this one:
If Oswald couldn't possibly have made it to Tenth Street in time to murder J.D. Tippit, then how do you explain the fact that he DID make it to that same area of Tenth & Patton in time to be seen (and positively identified) by witnesses like Ted Callaway, Sam Guinyard, Barbara Davis, and Virginia Davis (among others)?
DiEugenio apparently likes to pretend that ALL of those witnesses were dead wrong and they really saw only an "Oswald Imposter" on November 22. (Yeah, right, Jimmy.) :)
The other "distance" you mentioned (the distance between the Tippit shooting and the Texas Theater) is a distance that could easily have been traversed by Oswald in the time he had on November 22nd. Tippit was shot at about 1:14 or 1:15 PM, and Oswald was seen near the theater by Johnny Brewer on Jefferson Blvd. at roughly 1:35 to 1:40, which leaves ample time for Oswald to get there.
The question I have raised about that 20-minute interval isn't whether Oswald could have made it there, but instead, what was he doing all of that time between 1:15 and about 1:35? It's another of those unanswerable questions, because no witness was ever found who saw Oswald during that time period.
My guess would be that he was laying low in a back alley behind Jefferson Boulevard before he decided to duck into the dark theater. It's also my theory that a fifth bullet shell just might have been extracted by Oswald from his revolver during that 20-minute interval too, which would explain the mismatch in the brands of cartridge casings and bullets that exists in the Tippit investigation.
David Von Pein
December 2012
ADDENDUM #1:
A CONSPIRACY THEORIST SAID:
Like almost every other aspect of this case, there is much weirdness about [General Edwin] Walker and the shooting. Walker was a bitter enemy of JFK. How you go from shooting at Walker to killing his arch enemy JFK has never been explained.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
General Walker, like JFK, hated Castro (and Communism). That's a very good reason right there for Oswald wanting both JFK and Walker dead. A damn good motive in fact. Because Lee Oswald loved his adored Fidel.
LHO told Marina (via Marina's own Warren Commission testimony) that Lee feared Walker was going to become the next Hitler.
Some of Marina Oswald's WC testimony is provided below. Now, either Marina was a whale of a good teller of tall tales regarding a certain incident involving Retired Major General Edwin A. Walker in April of 1963 (as she gives some very, very DETAILED information about her husband and his planned attempt on the life of the general)....or Lee Harvey Oswald DID, indeed, take a gun and shoot at Walker on 04/10/63. Let's listen in:
Mr. RANKIN. How did you first learn that your husband had shot at General Walker?
Mrs. OSWALD. That evening he went out, I thought that he had gone to his classes or perhaps that he just walked out or went out on his own business. It got to be about 10 or 10:30, he wasn't home yet, and I began to be worried. Perhaps even later. Then I went into his room. Somehow, I was drawn into it--you know--I was pacing around. Then I saw a note there.
Mr. RANKIN. Did you look for the gun at that time?
Mrs. OSWALD. No, I didn't understand anything. On the note it said, "If I am arrested" and there are certain other questions, such as, for example, the key to the mailbox is in such and such a place, and that he left me some money to last me for some time, and I couldn't understand at all what can he be arrested for. When he came back, I asked him what had happened. He was very pale. I don't remember the exact time, but it was very late. And he told me not to ask him any questions. He only told me that he had shot at General Walker. Of course I didn't sleep all night. I thought that any minute now, the police will come. Of course I wanted to ask him a great deal. But in his state I decided I had best leave him alone; it would be purposeless to question him.
Mr. RANKIN. Did he say any more than that about the shooting?
Mrs. OSWALD. Of course in the morning I told him that I was worried, and that we can have a lot of trouble, and I asked him, "Where is the rifle? What did you do with it?" He said that he had left it somewhere, that he had buried it, it seems to me, somewhere far from that place, because he said dogs could find it by smell. I don't know---I am not a criminologist.
Mr. RANKIN. Did he tell you why he had shot at General Walker?
Mrs. OSWALD. I told him that he had no right to kill people in peacetime, he had no right to take their life because not everybody has the same ideas as he has. People cannot be all alike. He said that this was a very bad man, that he was a fascist, that he was the leader of a fascist organization, and when I said that even though all of that might be true, just the same he had no right to take his life, he said if someone had killed Hitler in time, it would have saved many lives. I told him that this is no method to prove your ideas, by means of a rifle.
Mr. RANKIN. Did you ask him how long he had been planning to do this?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes. He said he had been planning for two months. Yes--perhaps he had planned to do so even earlier, but according to his conduct, I could tell he was planning--he had been planning this for two months or perhaps a little even earlier.
Mr. RANKIN. Did he show you a picture of the Walker house then?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. That was after the shooting?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes. He had a book---he had a notebook in which he noted down quite a few details.
[Later....]
Mr. RANKIN. Did he explain to you about his being able to use a bus just as well as other people could use a car---something of that kind?
Mrs. OSWALD. No. Simply as a passenger. He told me that even before that time he had gone also to shoot, but he had returned. I don't know why. Because on the day that he did fire, there was a church across the street and there were many people there, and it was easier to merge in the crowd and not be noticed.
[End Warren Commission Testimony.]
After reading the above detailed Warren Commission testimony of Marina Oswald, how anybody can still think Lee Oswald didn't plan and carry out an assassination attempt against General Walker in April 1963 is beyond me.
David Von Pein
September 2007
ADDENDUM #2:
BILL KELLY SAID:
Who else besides Oswald was involved in the Walker shooting, and why didn’t Oswald prepare for JFK like he did for Walker – taking photos of the scene, keeping notebook, leaving note with instructions for Marina, etc.?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
There is no hard evidence that anyone other than Oswald was involved in the shooting of Edwin Walker on April 10th, 1963. If you'd like to speculate that the witness (or witnesses) who saw various vehicles outside of Walker's house at the time of the shooting indicates a "plot" to kill Walker--well, I guess you're free to speculate about such things. But it's not going to get you very far.
And can anyone with one good eye possibly deny that these two bullets are very similar (CE573 is the Walker bullet)?:
As for Oswald's preparations for killing Kennedy, in order to answer this type of unanswerable question, we'd have to possess the ability to get inside the mind of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oswald very likely didn't make any advanced plans to kill JFK simply because there really wasn't very much time for him to do so anyway. He couldn't have possibly learned about the exact Houston-to-Elm motorcade route until November 19 (at the earliest). And from his behavior and his remarks made to Marina on November 21st, I think his plan to shoot Kennedy was still a tentative and undecided one. Yes, he definitely went to Irving on Nov. 21st to retrieve his rifle (the "curtain rod" lie he told to Buell Frazier on Thursday morning pretty much proves this fact), but as far as his murderous plan being fixed in concrete as of Thursday night, I doubt that it was.
More on that here.
David Von Pein
September 2013
ADDENDUM #3:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Lee Harvey Oswald purchased a cheap rifle for himself in March 1963 (so he can shoot a certain retired general in Dallas). He misses in his attempt to kill General Walker, but decides to hang on to the Carcano rifle (for some reason that I've never quite been able to figure out, other than his own extreme stinginess and unwillingness to get rid of something he only used once).
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
If we knew to a certainty that he had shot at General Walker, my willingness to accept the Lone Nut explanation would increase considerably -- but this seems to me to be one of the weakest of the claims about LHO. Even if he did, Walker was pretty much the antithesis of JFK, and I have a really hard time picturing LHO as an indiscriminate assassin who was willing to kill anyone just to achieve notoriety.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Lance, how can you have ANY doubt whatever about Oswald's involvement in the Walker shooting with Commission Exhibit No. 1 staring at you? Marina found that note on Lee's desk (with their P.O. Box key on top of it) on the night of the Walker shooting when Lee was away from home all evening. Lee then came home, nervous and pale, late that night.
What do you think the note in CE1 was referring to if not the Walker murder attempt?
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
Oh, brother! Even the HSCA refused to believe Marina's tales about the Walker shooting!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Good boy, Jim. Just totally ignore the NOTE, which wasn't written by MARINA. It was written by LEE Oswald himself!
Tell us, Jim, why did Lee write that letter to Marina? Or do you want to pretend that CE1 is a fake and a fraud too? It's a letter which indicates LHO was about to go out and do something that was so bad that Lee thought he might very well end up dead or in the slammer.
Any idea what that activity on April 10, 1963, might have been?
Need any help?
Also -- notice any similarity here?:
JIM HARGROVE SAID THIS AND THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks, Jim H., for showing us all your true "Everything's Been Faked" colors. I'm loving it!
BTW, let's hear what the FBI's Bob Frazier had to say about the bullet types....
MR. EISENBERG -- "Can you think of any reason why someone might have called this [CE573] a steel-jacketed bullet?"
MR. FRAZIER -- "No, sir; except that some individuals commonly refer to rifle bullets as steel-jacketed bullets, when they actually in fact just have a copper-alloy jacket."
-----------
Frazier was just lying through his teeth there, right Jim?
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
That's right...endless excuses.
Dallas cops didn't know the difference between steel and copper jacketed bullets. Neither did General Walker, apparently, who said the bullet in evidence wasn't the bullet dug out of his house.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
So let me get this straight (from your POV), Jim....
You think CE573 is a fake and a fraud (naturally).
And you also believe that somebody was trying to frame Lee H. Oswald for the Walker shooting at the same time "somebody" placed CE573 into the evidence pile....even though we know that CE573 was banged up too much to be linked conclusively to the patsy's gun.
Right, Jim?
So, here's the question I have for you....
If the cops (or whoever) were wanting to frame LHO for the Walker shooting, why on Earth would they plant into evidence an essentially useless bullet that can never be tied specifically to Carcano Rifle C2766?
Were the plotters completely void of all brain cells? Or did they just want to keep busy in late November after the JFK assassination stuff quieted down a bit?
Or did they just simply screw up (again)---like they did when they left a Mauser on the sixth floor too, even though their patsy never owned one of those?
Your call.
In short (and in truth, IMO) --- The fact that CE573 cannot be linked to any specific rifle is virtual proof, right there, that it was not "planted" into the evidence pile. Because only a total idiot would want to do something so stupid. Although, yes, CE573 looks exactly like CE399 in many respects. No doubt about it. But if you're going to go to the trouble of PLANTING a bullet to frame a particular person, you're surely going to make sure that that bullet can be tied exclusively to the patsy's gun. Wouldn't you agree, Jim Hargrove?
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
Do you REALLY think this Russian note [CE1] was written by a native born American who spent a couple of years in Russia? Really??
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
There's a ton of LHO's correspondence written in the Russian language in the Warren Commission volumes.
And all of it (AFAIK) was determined by the handwriting experts to be in Lee Harvey Oswald's writing. Including Oswald's Diary (CE24). Do you think it's ALL phony and fake?
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
No, but I sure think that undated, unsigned note, found by Ruth Paine almost a week after her whole house had been repeatedly searched by the police, was a fraud!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It was stuffed inside a book. Was the FBI supposed to leaf through every page of every book in Ruth's house in a search for potential evidence?
Get real.
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
On Saturday morning, November 30th, Mrs. Paine gave the book (actually two books) to Irving Police Captain Paul Barger. She said she found the book, "Our Child", in Marina's bedroom and the "Book of Helpful Instructions" in her kitchen. Mrs. Paine told Captain Barger that Marina could not get along without those books and constantly used both books during the day.
Why did it take a week for Mrs. Paine to offer police two books that Marina used every day and couldn't get along without? Someone needed to take a close look at those books.
This story is as preposterous as the rest of the so-called "evidence" in this case.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yeah, right. Like a week (SEVEN days) was an absolute eternity, wasn't it? You're a howl, Jim.
So, what are you trying to suggest anyway -- that Ruth Paine planted a fake note in a book before she gave it to the police?
And the note was a perfect forgery too (per CTers), with "Oswald"-like handwriting that fooled every expert who examined it for years thereafter.
Talk about preposterous stories. The CTer version of "The Note" is far more preposterous.
David Von Pein
March 6-7, 2016
ADDENDUM #4:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
A very important additional fact concerning the "Walker bullet" (CE573) is this fact....
That bullet [CE573] was positively identified in June of 1964 by the police officer who first found it in General Walker's home....
"On June 12, 1964, Exhibit C148 [aka CE573], a mutilated rifle slug, was shown to Billy Gene Norvell, former Dallas police officer, 1603 Darr Street, Apartment 147, Irving, Texas, by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum, Federal Bureau of Investigation. He identified this exhibit as the same one which he had found at the residence of Major General Edwin A. Walker, Dallas, Texas, on April 10, 1963, and identified his marking on this slug." -- Commission Exhibit No. 2011; Page 6
(PART 2)
