WALT CAKEBREAD SAID:
[Dallas Homicide Captain J. Will] Fritz knew that Lee [Oswald] had taken a bus to the theater...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Tell me Walt --- Why have you decided (on your own) to just invent a bus trip to the Texas Theater for Lee Oswald on 11/22/63?
No such bus trip occurred and you know it. And there's not a speck of evidence to support such a bus trip "to the theater" either.
So why do you now want to pretend such a bus trip occurred on Nov. 22nd?
WALT CAKEBREAD SAID:
Perhaps you need to study the information a bit with your head extracted. There most certainly is evidence that Lee rode in a bus to the Theater. I've already posted it, so just extract your head and look.
[...]
Pretend?? Have someone who can understand the written word read Thomas Kelley's report to you. On Page 626 [of the Warren Report, here], Secret Service inspector Wrote: "In response to questions put to him by Captain Fritz, Oswald said that immediately after having left the building where he worked he WENT BY BUS to the theater where he was arrested."
And yes, I'm aware that Lee a few minutes later corrected that statement by saying that the portion of the trip from downtown Dallas to the rooming house was by taxi. But he did NOT change the portion of the trip from the rooming house to the theater. He rode the bus to the theater where he was arrested. That's what Lee Oswald told Captain Fritz.
[...]
Lee told Fritz that he had traveled to the theater BY BUS. Fritz saw no need to challenge that statement because he was unaware that Tippit had NOT been shot at the theater. Fritz didn't care HOW Lee had traveled to the theater, he was only interested in establishing that Lee was at the theater. Of course he knew that the DPD police had dragged Lee from the theater, so there was no real need to belabor that point. He simply wanted the suspect to admit that he was at the theater.
WALT CAKEBREAD ALSO SAID:
I sincerely wish that some LNer like yourself [DVP] would engage in a serious discussion on this topic.
The discovery that the early news reports reported that Tippit had been shot while attempting to apprehend Lee Harvey Oswald at the theater has been a golden nugget of information.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But it became fairly obvious (early on) that this "golden nugget" was just one of several non-conspiratorial mistakes made by the news media on 11/22---similar in nature to other "golden nuggets" of erroneous info reported on radio and television that day. Such as: The "Secret Service agent has been shot and killed" nugget. And the "Lyndon Johnson had a heart attack and/or was also hit by an assassin's bullet" golden nugget(s). And then there's the "Oswald has confessed to killing the President and the police officer" nugget, which turned out to be nothing but erroneous (and hilarious) hot air that was being reported as absolute fact by at least two of Dallas' radio stations on November 22 (KBOX and KLIF).
All of those things were obviously wrong. But they made it to the media airwaves anyway. And those errors don't involve anything "conspiratorial". They were simply mistakes that were corrected later in the day.
WALT CAKEBREAD SAID:
There is no doubt in my mind that Captain Fritz assumed that Tippit had been shot by Lee Oswald at the Texas Theater. The reporters were receiving their information at police headquarters and Fritz or one of his associates had probably told the reporters that Oswald had shot Tippit at the theater.
If Fritz believed that Oswald had shot Tippit at the theater, as I believe, then many of the questions like the title of this thread are answered.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Regardless of how the media received the early erroneous report that J.D. Tippit had been shot at the theater, the evidence that Captain Fritz had available to him——e.g., the multiple witnesses who positively identified Oswald as Tippit's killer, plus the bullet shell casings found on 10th Street that matched the gun that Oswald had on him when he was arrested——would certainly be enough to demonstrate to Fritz that Oswald was, in fact, the murderer of Officer Tippit.
And as for that last item of evidence I just mentioned above---I've talked about this obvious (but often overlooked) fact so many times in the past, I decided to memorialize it in a digital image....
WALT CAKEBREAD SAID:
This utterly ridiculous statement is the product of a warped brain. The author bases his statement on his imagination.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Quite the contrary, Mr. Cakebread. The "warped brain" is possessed by the conspiracy theorists who are constantly bending over backwards in order to pretend that virtually all of the evidence that hangs Mr. Oswald is tainted or fraudulent---without a bit of proof to show that any of it was actually faked. A CTer's suspicions about the evidence is more than enough "proof" for them.
In reality, of course, my 2013 statement concerning Oswald and the Tippit murder is a perfectly accurate quote given the sum total of the evidence as it exists in the Tippit case.
Regarding some of the physical evidence in the Tippit case....
There's absolutely nothing "tainted" or "suspicious" when it comes to the two bullet shells found by Barbara and Virginia Davis in their side yard on 11/22/63. There's a clear and distinct chain of possession for each of those shell casings—going from each Davis girl straight into the hands of two different Dallas Police Department officers.
Oh, yes, I expect Walter Cakebread to storm back into this discussion very shortly and argue that he knows for a fact that the DPD markings that exist on the two bullet shells found by the Davis girls—those being the markings put there by Detective C.N. Dhority and Crime Lab Captain George M. Doughty (one bullet shell each)—are in some fashion fraudulent, manufactured, or fake, and therefore should be discarded as "real" evidence in the J.D. Tippit murder investigation. But a conspiracy theorist's suspicions about those two shells do not add up to anything even remotely resembling "proof" that the shells are not legitimate evidence.
And I suppose that Walt will also argue that the following two excerpts from the FBI report found on pages 414 and 415 of Warren Commission Volume 24 are nothing but lies as well:
"On June 12, 1964, four .38 Special cartridge cases...were shown to Captain G.M. Doughty of the Dallas Police Department. .... Captain Doughty identified his marking on one of these cases. .... Captain Doughty stated this is the same shell which he obtained from Barbara Jeanette Davis at Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963." -- CE2011; Page 7
"On June 12, 1964, the same four cartridge cases...were shown by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum to Detective C.N. Dhority, Homicide Division, Dallas Police Department. .... Detective Dhority identified his marking on one of these cartridge cases. .... He stated this is the same cartridge case which he obtained from Virginia Davis, Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963." -- CE2011; Page 8
(Also see Pages 266-269 of Dale Myers' book "With Malice"; 1998 Edition.)
OTTO BECK SAID:
You can beat Walt to it and tell us what mark Dhority put on the shell.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Don't know. The markings on the shell are not clear enough to discern when looking at the series of three pictures of the shell which were photographed by Dale Myers and published on page 268 of "With Malice" (1998 Edition).
But the markings were discernible to Dhority himself in June of '64 when he positively IDed the shell as the one he marked on 11/22/63....
"Detective Dhority identified his marking on one of these cartridge cases. .... He stated this is the same cartridge case which he obtained from Virginia Davis...on November 22, 1963." -- CD1258, p.8 and CE2011, p.8 [http://maryferrell.org/Doc=11653]
OTTO BECK SAID:
...nobody else has since "discerned" those markings [on the bullet shell handled by C.N. Dhority].
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The reason for that could be because Dhority might not have marked the bullet shell with his INITIALS. He might have used some other distinct marking which Dhority could easily identify if he ever had to I.D. the shell again.
But regardless of the type of mark Dhority used, he did identify HIS DISTINCT MARK on the shell in June of 1964. Spit on his identification if you like, but Dhority identified his marking on the shell casing nonetheless. And the CTers who like to complain about it aren't going to change that basic fact.
OTTO BECK SAID:
Barnes, on April 7, 1964, identified the same shell, so how is your "clear and distinct chain of possession" going from the Davis girl supposed to work?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Doesn't make any difference what Barnes did. The only part of the "chain" that really matters is the FIRST LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER who took control of the bullet shell. And that person was C.N. Dhority, who got it from the civilian witness (Virginia Davis) who found it in her side yard.
It went straight from Davis to Dhority. And then Dhority marked it. It therefore makes no difference WHO ELSE might have handled the bullet shell AFTER Dhority, because Dhority will now ALWAYS be able to say "That's the exact shell I got from Virginia Davis", because he can see his mark on the shell.
The very same "chain of custody" argument can be made when discussing Oswald's C2766 Carcano rifle. Carl Day was the first law enforcement official to handle the rifle, and he etched his name into the stock of the weapon. So it doesn't make a bit of difference who else handled the weapon after Lt. Day handled it. It's always going to have the name "Day" scratched into the wooden stock, thereby confirming forever and always the fact that it was that exact rifle that was picked up off the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building by Lieutenant J.C. Day of the DPD on 11/22/63.
The same thing should have happened with Bullet CE399, but unfortunately it did not. The first person connected officially with "law enforcement" to handle that bullet at Parkland Hospital was Secret Service Agent Richard Johnsen, and he should have marked the physical bullet itself before it ever left his sight on 11/22/63. But he didn't. He utilized a typewritten note instead, which he then stapled to an envelope which contained the actual bullet.
And since Johnsen didn't etch his marking into the physical bullet itself, it opened the door for the conspiracy theorists to do just exactly what they have done for the last 50+ years---they get to claim that the weak chain of custody for CE399 must certainly indicate that somebody in officialdom did something of an underhanded nature with the bullet that was found on a stretcher at Parkland.
Many CTers would still no doubt be crying foul about CE399 even if Richard Johnsen had marked the bullet, but the lack of an "RJ" on that piece of metal has made the screams of "It Was Planted" by the conspiracists an easier argument to make (although it's still far from being a proven claim of fakery).
It would probably be better for conspiracists if they would start theorizing that civilian witnesses Virginia Davis and Barbara Davis "switched" the bullet shells to frame Oswald before police officers Doughty or Dhority came to the Davis apartment to collect shells #3 and #4. Because the CTers don't have a leg (or a shell) to stand on by continuing to pretend there's something fishy about the "chain of possession" when it comes to the marking of those two shells by members of the Dallas Police Department.
You never can tell---perhaps the two young Davis gals had a couple of spare cartridge casings from Smith & Wesson Revolver #V510210 under their beds on November 22nd.
After all, I learned many years ago that in a JFK conspiracy theorist's world, virtually anything truly is possible.
David Von Pein
September 24-27, 2021
