DONALD C. WILLIS SAID:
If I were a LNer, I too would flee from confronting the full implications of Sgt. [Gerald] Hill's admission that he did send the "auto .38" transmission. It doesn't just discredit his Commission-testimony denial re sending it; it discredits the testimony of Benavides, Poe, & Hill himself re the supposed throwing down of hulls by the shooter. Obviously, the hulls were found on the ground because the latter's gun ejected them *automatically*, as per Hill's DPD-radio transmission.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
So, apparently Don Willis thinks that J.D. Tippit's murderer was firing bullets from the corner of 10th & Patton, even though we know that Tippit himself was found lying in the street beside his patrol car, which was many yards down the road from the corner.
Would Willis now like to pretend that Tippit was really shot at the corner, but after being shot four times at point-blank range, he managed to stagger down the street before he finally crumpled to his death?
Awaiting Donald's brilliant explanation regarding his theory that a gunman fired an automatic at Tippit
FROM THE CORNER of Tenth and Patton.
It appears to me as if Donald Willis has really boxed himself into a tricky and untenable corner when he said this---
"Obviously, the hulls were found on the ground because the latter's gun ejected them automatically."
Via the above silly theory, Willis has no choice but to discount and disregard the observations of ALL of the witnesses who saw the shooting occur on Tenth Street. Willis has to now believe that Tippit's real killer was shooting from a location where absolutely ZERO witnesses claim to have seen a gunman firing shots.
Via Willis' loony theory, the real killer would have been located practically right next to William Scoggins, who was sitting in his taxicab at the corner of 10th & Patton. Yet Scoggins testified that the shooting occurred many yards up Tenth Street, not right at the corner.
And the other witnesses (Markham and Benavides) also confirm that Tippit's one and only killer shot Tippit from the sidewalk on 10th Street, with the shooter firing from across the hood of Tippit's police car.
Or maybe Willis would like to add a new wrinkle to his theory -- maybe he would like to now claim that Tippit's body and his police car were later MOVED to a location further up Tenth Street, which is where Car No. 10 was later
photographed.
If a gunman had really fired at Tippit from the corner where two of the bullet shells were found, here's how far away from Tippit that gunman would have been -- via
CE523.
Also:
Don Willis' theory has yet another insurmountable problem if he wants to pretend that an "automatic" pistol was really used to kill Officer Tippit and that problem is the fact that two of the bullet shells that were later found near the scene of J.D. Tippit's murder were found by
Barbara Davis and
Virginia Davis in the SIDE YARD of their apartment building--on PATTON AVENUE, not on Tenth Street. (See page 266 of Dale Myers' book "With Malice" for an illustration that shows exactly where those two shells were found.)
Which would mean that if the shells were really being fired by an automatic weapon, then the gunman was either running around the corner as he was firing the gun, or he was somehow able to shoot Tippit from the SIDE YARD of the Davises' residence, which would mean the killer would have to shoot THROUGH THE APARTMENT BUILDING in order to hit Tippit.
Obviously what happened is this: Lee Harvey Oswald shot J.D. Tippit with
Smith & Wesson revolver #V510210, and after firing four (or perhaps five) bullets at Tippit, Oswald ran (or walked briskly) toward the corner of Tenth & Patton. When he reached the corner, Oswald began to unload the empty shells from his revolver, with two of the shells falling to the ground on Tenth Street (very near the corner itself), with the other two shells coming out of the gun after Oswald had reached the side yard of the Davis apartment building (again see page 266 of "With Malice").
The above scenario of Oswald's shell-dumping is also perfectly consistent with the known characteristics of Lee Oswald's V510210 revolver, which is a gun that would result in bulged (or slightly expanded) cartridge cases after bullets were fired through the rechambered revolver. Which means the shells would have a tendency to stick in the chamber, resulting in additional effort being required by any gunman attempting to manually remove the shells from the weapon (see page 258 of "With Malice").
This "sticky shells" situation was almost certainly the case with Oswald's revolver on November 22, 1963, at 10th & Patton, with the shells being a bit difficult for Oswald to remove from the gun all at once. Hence, there were two shells found near the corner on Tenth Street, while the other two shells were found around the corner in the Davises' side yard.
It's also quite possible that the "sticky" nature of Oswald's bullet shells could be the reason that only four shells were recovered at the Tippit murder scene (with the possibility existing that Oswald actually fired five bullets at Officer Tippit, with one bullet missing the target).
If Oswald did, indeed, fire five shots at Tippit (which can never be proven, of course), instead of just four shots, then it's possible that the fifth bullet shell was simply lost to history, never having been recovered by anyone after the shooting.
The above scenario is somewhat buttressed by the testimony of eyewitness Sam Guinyard, who watched Oswald flee the scene of Tippit's murder from Ted Callaway's car lot.
Guinyard told the Warren Commission that he saw Oswald
"knocking empty shells out of his pistol", although it's a little unclear exactly where Oswald was located when Guinyard saw him removing the shells. It's possible Guinyard was only referring to Oswald kicking out shells near the corner of 10th & Patton. But it's also possible that Guinyard saw Oswald still in the process of dumping shells out of the gun when Oswald was much further down Patton Avenue.
And if the latter situation is true, then it's quite conceivable that Oswald could have removed at least one bullet shell from his revolver when he was near the corner of Patton and Jefferson Boulevard. And we know that no bullet shells were recovered that far away from where J.D. Tippit was killed.
DONALD C. WILLIS SAID:
Good to see that LNs are (properly) confused by the witnessing of falling shells, by the Davises, Benavides, and Guinyard.
Start with Benavides:
"[The gunman] catty-cornered across the yard.... He didn't go all the way on the sidewalk. He cut across the yard.... He turned & went down the sidewalk to, well, until he got in front of the corner house.... He had just got back to the sidewalk when he threw the first [shell] & when he threw the second one, he had already cut back into the yard. He just sort of cut across." (
v6p450)
Dale Myers' diagram of these actions accurately shows the path Benavides describes the gunman taking, across the yard, nowhere near the 10th & Patton intersection (p76). Meanwhile, the Davises testified that--from their front porch--they saw the man simply emptying shells from the gun into his "left hand" (Barbara
v3pp343-44; Virginia
v6p460).
For some reason, Benavides didn't see the gunman palming any shells, and the Davises didn't see the man dropping any shells, although they were supposedly looking at the same scene. And, contrary to DVP, above, the shells which the Davises said that they found on the side yard did NOT "come out of the gun" after the man "had reached the side yard". Both said that they came out and were palmed in their FRONT yard. If the two shells were still in the gun when the man went around the house to the side yard, then the Davises would have seen NO shells, either falling or being palmed.
DVP is haplessly trying to reconcile the testimonies of Benavides, the Davises, and Markham, who, famously, testified that the gunman went down the 10th St. sidewalk, right to the intersection. Her testimony contradicts that of Benavides & the Davises, who have him cutting across the latter's lawn (as seen in the Myers diagram).
Markham undercuts Benavides who, in turn, undercuts the Davises. The four cannot be reconciled. Shells apparently got into the grass, but we'll never know exactly how--the witnesses can't agree. One begins to wonder if they saw anything.
Interesting that DVP here overrides the Davises' testimony, which posits a different reason for the delay in getting the shells to the ground! I do agree that their testimony SHOULD be overridden, for other reasons.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I wonder if Donald Willis can split his hairs any thinner as he tries to fine-tune the shell-dropping at 10th & Patton to a microscopic level that even
he has surely got to know is simply impossible (not to mention downright ludicrous).
To a reasonable person, the testimonies of Barbara Davis, Virginia Davis, and Domingo Benavides (the 3 people who ultimately picked up the 4 bullet shells) are perfectly consistent with each other. The KEY "consistent" factor being this one:
Those three witnesses each saw ONE gunman dumping shells out of just ONE gun near the corner of Tenth Street and Patton Avenue in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff on Friday, November 22nd, 1963 AD!
ONE GUNMAN was seen dumping shells from ONE SINGLE GUN.
Perhaps the above sentence should be placed on a magnet on Don Willis' refrigerator door. Because I think he needs to be constantly reminded of that important fact.
DONALD C. WILLIS SAID:
Don't you feel pretty silly contradicting the testimonies of the Davises? Your own "fine-tuning" eliminates them as believable witnesses!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The things I've said about the shell-dropping do not contradict the Davis girls at all. Why on Earth do you think that
ALL of the bullet shells in Oswald's revolver had to behave in the exact same manner on November 22nd? Why couldn't just ONE or TWO of the shells have been the "sticky" ones? Maybe four of the shells slid out fairly easily and quickly, while one or two others stuck in the chamber and required further effort (and time) by Oswald to extract them.
Tell me, Don, why you think my above hypothesis is a totally impossible one.
DONALD C. WILLIS SAID:
Doesn't work. Benavides said that he saw the guy DROP two shells on the ground in front. The Davises said that he put two shells IN HIS HAND, but did not drop them where they saw him extract them. They were later (supposedly) found in the side yard. Maybe the guy had sticky HANDS!
Try again. I hate to force you to be so ingenious....
I think you have to go with either sticky shells or the Davises, but not both.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
As I explained earlier, a situation could very well have existed in which there could have possibly been one or two "sticky" shells in Lee Oswald's revolver and
at the same time still have the Davis girls plus Domingo Benavides seeing exactly what they each said they saw with respect to Oswald's shell-dumping. And why anyone would think those things could
not co-exist in this case is a real mystery to me, because it's obvious from my 4-point timeline listed below that all of those things could have very easily co-existed in Oak Cliff on November 22, 1963,
and with Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman:
1.) Oswald is able to extract two of the spent bullet shells in or near the front yard of the apartment where the two Davis girls lived (near the corner of Tenth & Patton). These are the two shells that witness Domingo Benavides saw the gunman throw on the ground and which were later recovered by Benavides himself.
2.) As Oswald continues to move through the shrubbery as he cuts across the corner of 10th and Patton, he manages to extract two more bullet shells from his gun (and is seen by the Davis girls with those shells in his hand just a few seconds before Oswald drops them on the ground in the side yard of the Davises' apartment house).
3.) If Oswald fired more than four shots at Officer Tippit (which is quite possible, especially considering the "five pistol shots" testimony provided by witness Ted Callaway, plus the "Remington vs. Winchester" mismatch that exists when comparing the bullets taken from Tippit's body to the types of cartridge cases that littered the murder scene near 10th & Patton), then it would mean that at least one or two bullet shells (plus one or two bullets as well) were never recovered after Tippit's murder, which would have to mean that....
4.) Lee Harvey Oswald, at some unknown and undetermined point after leaving the immediate area of Tippit's murder, extracted one or two additional bullet shells from his Smith & Wesson V510210 revolver and discarded them somewhere between Patton Avenue and the Texas Theater prior to being apprehended by the Dallas Police Department.
Donald Willis' protestations notwithstanding, the scenario outlined above is a perfectly reasonable and sensible one in light of all the evidence that exists in the J.D. Tippit murder case --- especially when factoring in the
sticky shells situation which we know
can easily occur after bullets are fired through Oswald's revolver.
DONALD C. WILLIS SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Once again, Donald Willis is attempting to fine-tune the witness testimony to absurd levels.
And I really don't know where Don is trying to go with his microscopic analysis of the Davis and Benavides statements. Because with or without Don Willis' absurd "fine-tuning", the fact will
still remain that both Davis girls positively identified the
ONE AND ONLY shell-dumper as
LEE HARVEY OSWALD.
It's looking more and more like Donald is merely playing a useless parlor game with the witness statements.
David Von Pein
January 7, 2012
October 9-14, 2019
