JOHNNY BREWER AND THE
SHOOTING OF J.D. TIPPIT....
PAT SPEER SAID:
[Johnny] Brewer said he knew a policeman had been shot when he observed Oswald outside his store. This was roughly 15 minutes after the shooting. Well, did someone report the Tippit shooting on the radio within 15 minutes of the shooting? That seems mighty quick, considering there were no police or reporters on the scene, and they would need to be on the scene before a radio station would even think about reporting such a story, right?
Anyone know?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I've often wondered which one of the several Dallas/Fort Worth radio stations Johnny Brewer was listening to when he was standing behind the counter of his Hardy's Shoe Store on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. He doesn't provide that information in his
Warren Commission testimony, nor does he provide such info in his
December 6, 1963, affidavit or during his brief time on the witness stand during the
1986 mock Oswald trial in London. Such information is also not available in Dale Myers' exhaustive book on J.D. Tippit's murder,
"With Malice".
[EDIT -- I was in error re: Myers' book; Click Here.]
Perhaps in some later interview Brewer mentioned which radio station he was listening to on November 22nd, but I've never been able to pin it down. That particular detail is also not to be found in Brewer's
February 27, 1964, FBI interview.
In any event, it's quite clear that at least
one of the radio stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area had provided,
prior to
approximately 1:36 PM (Dallas time), a bulletin concerning the shooting of a police officer in Oak Cliff. We
know that whatever radio station Johnny Calvin Brewer was listening to on 11/22/63 most definitely
did broadcast such a bulletin (most likely somewhere between 1:30 PM and 1:35 PM).
I agree with Pat Speer that the timing of that initial bulletin concerning the Tippit shooting does seem very fast, given the fact that Officer Tippit wasn't even shot until about 1:14 or 1:15 PM, but the alternative would be to believe that Brewer just made up the part about hearing a radio report about the shooting of a policeman
before Brewer ever laid eyes on Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22.
Or, I suppose another alternative would be to believe that Brewer merely conflated the various timelines in his mind when he later told his story about what happened that day. That is to say, via this alternative, Brewer
really only heard the information about the shooting of a police officer
much later in the day, but his memory got all fuzzy and when he later told people what he remembered, he incorrectly said that the radio report concerning the policeman was something he had heard
prior to Oswald poking his head into the lobby of Brewer's shoe store.
Analyzing The Radio Coverage....
If, in fact, Johnny Brewer definitely did hear a radio report about a policeman being shot
prior to the time when Brewer saw Lee Oswald lurking in the doorway of the shoe store, I can say with some certainty that one of the stations that Brewer was definitely
not listening to on 11/22/63 was KLIF Radio in Dallas
[But, then again, maybe he was; see this footnote]....and that's because a timestamp provided by the KLIF announcers during their coverage at 1:48 PM CST indicates that the first KLIF bulletin concerning the shooting of a policeman in Oak Cliff didn't occur for another 14 minutes after that "1:48" timestamp, which would mean that KLIF's first bulletin on the Tippit shooting came at 2:02 PM CST (give or take a couple of minutes). And, of course, by 2:02 PM, Lee Oswald was already in police custody and, in fact, had just entered Dallas Police Headquarters in City Hall a couple of minutes earlier. (The initial bulletin about the Tippit murder comes at
2:25:45 in the video below.)
Another local station that can be eliminated as being the one John Brewer was tuned-in to on 11/22 is Fort Worth's WBAP Radio, which didn't broadcast anything about the shooting incident in Oak Cliff until approximately 1:58 PM CST (go to
4:00:15 in the video below).
KRLD Radio (Dallas) can also be eliminated as the source for Brewer's information about the Oak Cliff shooting. By my calculations, the first details heard on KRLD about the shooting of a policeman occurred at 2:04 PM Dallas time (at
1:23:31 in the video below).
KBOX Radio might have been the station that Johnny Brewer had turned on that day, because within the first minute of the KBOX coverage heard below (which equates to about
1:35 PM CST), there's a bulletin which states:
"We also have one Dallas detective reported dead on arrival at Parkland Hospital." (If that report was referring to Officer Tippit, then there are two errors in it, because Tippit was taken to Methodist Hospital, not Parkland, and Tippit, of course, was not a "detective". But later radio reports
did also make the mistake of calling the slain policeman "Detective Tippit". So that KBOX bulletin probably
is referring to Officer Tippit's death. And if that's the case, then Johnny Brewer could have heard about the Tippit shooting
prior to seeing Oswald come into the lobby area of his shoe store. And it's also possible that KBOX could have provided a bulletin about the policeman's shooting even earlier than 1:35, but I have no way to confirm whether they did or not, because the version of the KBOX material in my collection begins at about 1:35 PM.)
Another station that's still in the running for a possible pre-1:35 PM bulletin about the Tippit shooting is Dallas' WFAA Radio. I can't confirm one way or the other whether WFAA broadcast any Tippit bulletins prior to about 1:45 PM, because that's when my copy of their coverage begins. But WFAA was very quick with their first bulletin concerning Oswald's arrest in the Texas Theater, which is a bulletin that occurred within a very few minutes of Oswald's capture (at the
4:20 mark in
this WFAA Radio coverage).
For the record, the only other Dallas/Fort Worth radio station that I currently have in my assassination archive is a little bit of coverage from
KXOL in Fort Worth, but it has been heavily edited and cannot be used for any kind of a reliable timeline of events.
STEPHANIE GOLDBERG SAID:
That's great information. In this case, it's just as important to know who didn't do what and when as who did.
TONY KROME SAID:
Julia Postal was listening to KLIF and did not hear anything about an officer being shot before police arrived:
[Quoting from Julia Postal's
Warren Commission testimony:]
"And they raced in, and the next thing I knew, they were carrying----well, that is when I first heard Officer Tippit had been shot because some officer came in the box office and used the phone, said, "I think we have got our man on both accounts." "What two accounts?" And said, "Well, Officer Tippit's," shocked me, because Officer Tippit used to work part time for us years ago. I didn't know him personally."
This implies that Brewer did not mention to Julia Postal anything about an officer being shot.
MARK KNIGHT SAID:
Mr. Von Pein, I want to thank you for your research on this specific topic. I hardly expected it, based upon your tendency to rely on the Warren Report, Bugliosi, and Myers. It has changed, somewhat, my opinion of your work. Glad to see you not relying on mere faith in the aforementioned triumvirate, and instead checking outside sources, such as the radio broadcasts you checked.
Amazed, but glad you stepped outside that "Bermuda Triangle."
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I'm certainly willing to accept the possibility that Johnny Brewer might have gotten mixed up concerning the precise time when he first heard the news about a police officer being shot in Oak Cliff. Perhaps he did hear that news a little later in the day. But also keep in mind the 1:35 PM KBOX report about the DOA "detective" (which is a remarkably speedy bulletin, because KBOX not only was reporting on the
wounding of a police officer, they were already reporting on the
death of that policeman as early as 1:35), which tends to indicate that at least one Dallas-area radio station
was reporting the officer's shooting at a time which would be perfectly consistent with Johnny Brewer's account of only seeing Oswald
after hearing about the policeman's shooting on the radio.
The KBOX audio footage I provided does not, however, give the necessary detail about the shooting taking place in
Oak Cliff, but, as I mentioned earlier, it's possible that such an "Oak Cliff" detail
was mentioned in an earlier KBOX bulletin, which preceded the point in time when my truncated copy of the coverage begins.
In any event, even if Brewer didn't hear any pre-1:36 PM radio bulletin concerning the Tippit shooting, it's still quite clear to me from the weight of John Brewer's testimony and statements over the years that Brewer
was suspicious of Lee Harvey Oswald's behavior and actions shortly after 1:30 PM on 11/22/63 (such as: Oswald turning his back to the street just as the police cars went roaring by).
And if some conspiracy theorists have a desire to totally discount and deem invalid
all of Mr. Brewer's testimony because of this issue of whether he really did hear a radio bulletin at the time he said he heard it, then I think those conspiracists are making a big mistake.
As it turned out, Johnny Brewer was the person who was most directly responsible for setting the wheels in motion which ultimately led to the capture of President Kennedy's (accused) assassin in the Texas Theater less than 90 minutes after JFK was shot.
And I have a strong feeling that those wheels would have been set in motion that day
with or without Mr. Brewer hearing anything on the radio about a police officer getting shot nearby. And that's mainly because of Lee Harvey Oswald's appearance and actions when Brewer saw him. Brewer could see that Oswald was
"scared",
"looked like he had been running", and was trying to duck from the police cars out on the street. And all of this was occurring just an hour after the President had been shot and killed just a few miles away. Those factors, in total, resulted in Brewer taking the actions that he took on November 22, 1963.
BTW / FYI....
Below is a CBS-TV interview with Johnny Brewer from 1964. In this interview, Brewer says this:
"Just a few minutes before he [Oswald] walked into the lobby, on the radio they had a bulletin that an officer had been shot here in Oak Cliff."
TONY KROME SAID:
Do you know if Brewer warned Postal about the guy being possibly armed and dangerous? It would have been obvious to Brewer if he thought the same guy had just shot someone.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I don't recall anything like that coming out in Julia Postal's testimony. But, interestingly, in that
1964 CBS-TV interview, Brewer claims that in addition to the fact that he said Oswald was acting scared, he (Brewer) was also relying on the physical description of the suspect in
the President's assassination (
"5-8, 5-9, 150 pounds").
Brewer said he had heard that description on the radio before he ever saw Oswald that day. Brewer actually implies in the '64 interview that he had also heard the description of
Tippit's killer being given out on the radio as well (although when he refers to the shooting of the officer, it's quite possible that Brewer was still talking about the description of the man suspected of shooting
the President).
But I think there might, indeed, have been a bit of
unintentional "conflation" on Mr. Brewer's part concerning the timelines and when he might have heard certain things on the radio.
The 1964 CBS interview had previously led me to speculate that Brewer possibly might have been listening to a police scanner on November 22nd in his shoe store. But after checking Brewer's Warren Commission testimony, I learned that the "police scanner" idea could not be accurate, because Brewer told the Commission this:
"We were listening to a transistor radio there in the store, just listening to a regular radio program."
TONY KROME SAID:
Could it be that Brewer didn't say anything to Postal because Brewer knew the man since he had previously sold him a pair of size 8-1/2 crepe soled shoes, and maybe he thought, even though he's acting strange, he did not believe he was the shooter?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Then why did he follow Oswald up the street to the theater? Just for the exercise?
And why did Brewer ask Postal to call the police? Did he do that because he
DIDN'T think the strange-acting man who was ducking the police sirens had done anything wrong that day?
TONY KROME SAID:
No, I'm saying Brewer viewed both the strange actions of the man and the cops tearing up the street as somehow related, then decided to follow who he thought [to] be a suspicious person, but [not] necessarily an armed shooter.
In other words, since we can't find a radio broadcast that mentions an Oak Cliff shooting together with a description of the suspect, Brewer followed him only for the reasons mentioned above.
BTW, Brewer has stated that he thinks it was KLIF he was tuned into that day.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
When did he say that?
TONY KROME SAID:
Brewer said that to ex-detective Ian Griggs back in 1996 when he was interviewed.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
OK. Thanks.
[EDIT -- I've located the text of that 1996 interview with Johnny Brewer. It can be found
here. On the second page of the interview—
here—Brewer does, indeed, say that the radio station he was listening to on 11/22/63 could have been KLIF. But he then adds,
"but I honestly don't know".
]
JEFF CARTER SAID:
Your collections of material are much appreciated, and in this case they indicate there was no radio broadcast 15 minutes after the shooting which could have provided Brewer with a "description". The reporting which did occur some minutes later refers to a suspect in a white shirt.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But it depends on
which "shooting" you're referring to. If you mean the
Tippit shooting, then I think you're right---there was no radio report regarding the shooter's description put out within 15 minutes (or so) of the Tippit murder. But there was most definitely a "description" of President Kennedy's assassin broadcast on the radio, and that description was aired on KLIF Radio (the station that Tony Krome just said Brewer was listening to) as early as
12:54 PM (Dallas time), which would corroborate what Brewer said to Eddie Barker in his CBS-TV interview in 1964 when Brewer said this:
"Right after the President was shot, they broadcast a description on the radio of this man..."
If, in fact, Brewer was listening to KLIF Radio that day, the description he would have heard at 12:54 PM would have initially come from a female telephone operator at the Dallas Police Department, who quickly provided the description of the alleged Presidential assassin for a KLIF reporter who was recording the phone call for later broadcast. The description she provided was:
"White male, 30 [years old], 5-10, 165, 30-caliber rifle, and I believe it was at Elm and Houston where it came from; now I don't know definitely and I don't like to say." [The audio can be heard below.]
And then, two minutes later at
12:56 PM, KLIF's Gary DeLaune repeats the description (a little slower and clearer this time, with DeLaune adding two key words—
"slender build"—to the description):
For the record, the
"5-10, 165 pounds" description was repeated again just three minutes later on KLIF, at
12:59 PM CST, and then yet again four minutes later at
1:03 PM.
That description that was aired multiple times by KLIF, of course, doesn't quite match Johnny Brewer's figures that he provided in his '64 CBS interview. He said in that interview that the description he heard concerning
Kennedy's assassin (
not the description of
Tippit's killer) was
"5-8, 5-9, 150 pounds", which is not accurate. But that error can likely be attributed to a slightly bad memory on Mr. Brewer's part.
But there is one KLIF bulletin (aired at
1:08 PM) which says that the assassin of JFK was
"approximately 5 feet, 8 inches tall [and] weighs about 160 pounds".
--------------------------
KLIF FOOTNOTE --- After re-examining my KLIF-Radio file, I've now discovered that there are 7 minutes of missing audio footage in the first 2-and-a-half hours of my
3-hour and 17-minute copy of KLIF's 11/22/63 assassination coverage. From the timestamps provided by the on-air reporters, I've been able to determine that the missing seven minutes occur between precisely
1:37 PM and 1:44 PM (CST). This, therefore, leaves open the possibility that a bulletin concerning the Tippit shooting
could have been broadcast by KLIF during the AWOL seven-minute period. However, if such a bulletin
was broadcast during that time period, it would likely have been at a time when Johnny Brewer wasn't even inside his Hardy's Shoe Store to hear the bulletin on his transistor radio, because Brewer by that time had probably already left his store and followed Oswald up the street to the Texas Theater. But we must always keep in mind the fact that nobody was looking at a stopwatch or a clock when these events were unfolding on Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff on November 22nd, so the word "approximately" must always be inserted into discussions like this one when we're talking about "timelines", etc.
TONY KROME SAID:
Julia Postal was listening to KLIF. She said to the police when she phoned them:
"I said I hadn't heard the description."
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And yet we
know for a fact that KLIF definitely did broadcast a
"description" of a "suspect" (in the Kennedy murder), and KLIF re-broadcast that description at least three times before 1:10 PM. And yet Julia apparently heard none of those re-broadcasts, even though she
was listening to KLIF. ~shrug~
Or are you going to
LIMIT it to a description of
TIPPIT'S killer (from Postal's POV)? Even though Postal was obviously
NOT (in her mind) limiting any "description" of the suspect to
JUST the shooting of the police officer....
MRS. JULIA POSTAL [at 7 H 11] -- "...so, I told Johnny about the fact that the President had been assassinated. "I don't know if this is the man they want," I said, "in there, but he is running from them for some reason," and I said "I am going to call the police..."
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO ADDED:
Related Topic....
Julia Postal's
December 4, 1963, affidavit is quite an interesting document too. In it, Julia says:
"At approximately 1:30 PM or a little later I was working in the ticket office at the theater. I was listening to my transistor radio, and KLIF had just announced that President Kennedy was dead. I had just seen a police car go west on Jefferson. As the police went by, a man ducked inside the theater. .... I stepped from the box office to the front and looked west. When I turned around, Johnny Brewer, Manager of Hardy's Shoes Store, was standing there."
The above details would seem to buttress and corroborate the testimony and statements of Johnny Brewer as well.
By the way, KLIF officially announced the death of President Kennedy at precisely 1:35 PM CST (which would have been two minutes after Assistant White House Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff had made the
official announcement of JFK's death from Parkland Hospital). So Julia Postal's estimated time for when that event occurred was just about spot-on perfect.
CORY SANTOS SAID:
David, thank you for noting yet another "strange coincidence" with the clock. I shall add it to my JFK collection. Now, assuming you are right about the broadcast at 12:54, who was the female officer and where did she get this info? I doubt Howard Brennan was so astute.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It wasn't a female "officer". It was, as I said earlier, a female
telephone operator at the Dallas Police Department. KLIF gave the name of the operator too---it was a "Mrs. Cripton" (sp?) or something similar to that.
And she got that description, quite obviously, from her own police department. It was the official APB bulletin that went out over the air to all Dallas police officers at 12:44 or 12:45 PM CST. And, yes, it's a description that very likely originated (at least in part) with Howard L. Brennan. (The part about the "30-caliber rifle" didn't come from Brennan, however, since Brennan didn't know beans about rifles.)
CORY SANTOS SAID:
Then, explain who added slender build and on what basis.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
That detail probably came (originally) from Howard Brennan too. (Just as he says in his
11/22 affidavit.)
CORY SANTOS SAID:
Then, explain the basis of the 1:08 description.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yeah, I agree, that one is strange. KLIF's 1:08 PM description of the
same suspect suddenly changed to
"approximately 5 feet, 8 inches tall, about 160 pounds".
I haven't the foggiest idea how the President's killer managed to shrink two inches and lose five pounds in just five minutes (from 1:03 to 1:08).
So, Cory, does this slight "description" discrepancy mean that I'm supposed to toss aside all of the
other evidence in this case that clearly indicates that Lee Harvey Oswald was a double murderer on 11/22/63?
Heaven help all reasonable people if that
is what you're suggesting. :)
CORY SANTOS SAID:
I find it odd when weighing credibility of witnesses you tend to give far latitude to some and none to others. What FACTS make you give Brewer wide latitude here? In other words, a judge uses facts to weigh witness credibility. What facts make you feel it was just an
"oops, bad memory" blunder? Thank you.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Because the "bad memory" explanation makes by far the most sense (in my opinion).
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Here's an e-mail exchange I had with Dale Myers on April 19th and April 20th, 2019....
Subject: J.C. Brewer and the Tippit radio report
Date: 4/19/2019; 5:05 PM EDT
From: Dale K. Myers
To: David Von Pein
-----------------------------
David,
I was alerted to
this thread and found your comment:
“...Such information is also not available in Dale Myers' exhaustive book on J.D. Tippit's murder, "With Malice"....”
to be incorrect.
My work on this issue was quite exhaustive and appears as endnote No. 617 (pages 738-739 of the
2013 Edition of “With Malice”) which I’ve pasted below for your convenience. Please give credit where credit is due.
Dale
============================
"With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald And The Murder Of Officer J.D. Tippit" by Dale K. Myers (2013 Edition); Endnotes on pages 738 and 739:
“[617]
7H2 (WCT [Warren Commission Testimony] of Johnny Calvin Brewer, April 2, 1964)
[Note: The exact time that Brewer heard the radio broadcast on the shooting of Officer Tippit is not known, although it was very likely broadcast at about 1:31 p.m. over KBOX radio.
There were five major radio stations covering the Dallas area --
WFAA (570 AM),
WBAP (820 AM),
KRLD (1080 AM),
KBOX (1480 AM), and
KLIF (1190 AM). All of them routinely monitored the Dallas police radio. A review of archival recordings made by the four [sic; actually five] radio stations show that neither the shooting in Oak Cliff nor its location was broadcast until after Oswald was arrested at 1:51 p.m. However, the archival recordings of two of the radio stations – WFAA and KBOX – do not cover the entire assassination period. The WFAA recordings begin at 1:47 p.m.; KBOX recordings begin at 1:35 p.m.
A 1:59 p.m. KBOX report from newsman Sam Pate repeats information known to have been previously broadcast, including a report about the Tippit shooting (
“Moments ago a police officer reported to have been shot down at Tenth and Patton in the Oak Cliff area. Several squads of police, approximately twenty men, ordered to the Oak Cliff area. A late word shows that the police officer was dead on arrival at Methodist Hospital.”). This KBOX report on the Tippit shooting was probably broadcast earlier on KBOX shortly after 1:31 p.m. when it was reported over the Dallas police radio that Tippit was DOA at Methodist Hospital.
During a 2005 interview for The Sixth Floor Museum, Brewer said that in addition to hearing a report about the Tippit shooting prior to Oswald’s appearance in front of Hardy’s Shoe Store, he also heard a radio report that the President had died. (Interview of Johnny C. Brewer, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, November 21, 2005)
In his 1964 Warren Commission testimony, Brewer said that the president’s death was only a rumor. (
7H2)
Texas Theater ticket-seller Julia Postal was more specific about the timing of Oswald’s arrival at the theater.
“I was listening to KLIF [on a little transistor radio], and I was down in the little box office, and they kept saying that Parkland hadn’t issued an official report, that [President Kennedy] had been removed from the operating table, and everyone wanted to surmise, but still hope...” (
7H9 WCT of Julia Postal, April 2, 1964)
According to Postal, they had just announced that Kennedy was dead when Oswald ducked into the theater. (
24H221 CE2003, p.50, Affidavit of Julia Postal, December 4, 1963)
KLIF archival radio recordings show that at 1:27 p.m. KLIF announcers began reporting the “strong rumor” that the President was dead. The official announcement came eight minutes later, at 1:35 p.m., nearly simultaneous with the Dallas police radio call for all units to report to the library at Marsalis and Jefferson – the call that was no doubt responsible for the police activity that drove Oswald to seek refuge in the lobby of Hardy’s Shoe Store and moments later, the Texas Theater.
A KLIF radio log entry suggesting that the Tippit shooting and its location were broadcast shortly after White House press secretary Malcolm Kilduff’s 1:33 p.m. news conference on the president’s death, as reported in the
1998 edition of this volume, is misleading. A review of the actual recordings shows that newsman Roy Nichols’ brief report (
“...there was a shooting a moment ago of a police officer in the 500 block of West Jefferson in Oak Cliff and he was dead on arrival at Methodist.”) wasn’t broadcast until 2:02 p.m. (KLIF, Dallas, Radio Log, November 22, 1963, Reel No.5, p.8, Entry #23, “Report of shooting of Police Officer in the 500 block of West Jefferson in Oak Cliff a few minutes ago.” Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, MI)]”
[End "With Malice" Quotes.]
============================
DVP's E-Mail Reply To Dale Myers....
Subject: Re: J.C. Brewer and the Tippit radio report
Date: 4/20/2019; 1:11 AM EDT
From: David Von Pein
To: Dale K. Myers
-----------------------------
Hi Dale,
Thank you very much for the information regarding Johnny Brewer and the Tippit radio broadcasts that appears in Endnote No. 617 of the 2013 edition of your book,
"With Malice".
What I
should have said in my Internet post on this matter is that the topic concerning Brewer and the radio stations isn't covered in the
1998 edition of
"With Malice", which is the only edition of your book that I currently possess. I don't have the 2013 edition at the present time.
The excerpts you have provided via your book's extensive Endnote #617 contain a lot of useful information on this topic. And I was very happy to verify that my own research that I've been doing this week (while utilizing the resources in my own audio/video collection) has been very close to perfect when it comes to some of the specific timestamps of the various radio bulletins that were aired on several of the Dallas-area stations on 11/22/63. Per the figures in your endnote, I hit some of them right on the nose---even though I had no access to any kind of "Radio Logs" for each of the stations. I'm very pleased about that. And I'm pleased to now have a second source (the endnote in your book) with which to verify some of those timestamps.
Thanks again, Dale. I appreciate it
very much.
Regards,
David Von Pein
[End E-Mails.]
JIM HARGROVE POSTED ALL THIS GARBAGE.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Even after all these years of putting up with the silly rantings of conspiracy theorists, it still burns both sides of my toast when I hear these CTers insist that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't fire a single shot at Officer J.D. Tippit---despite the fact that Sweet Lee was
caught red-handed with the Tippit murder weapon in his hands just 35 minutes after murdering the 11-year veteran Dallas patrolman.
Plus, I'd like to know how on this Earth Tippit could have been declared "DOA" at Methodist Hospital at
1:15 PM (as many conspiracy theorists firmly believe) when we
know that his body was still lying in the middle of Tenth Street as late as
1:18 PM?
The ambulance didn't even arrive to pick up Tippit's body until
1:18:59 PM [see Dale Myers'
"With Malice", page 104, 1998 edition].
Let me guess --- Conspiracy theorists think that the Dudley Hughes ambulance slip is a fake too, right? That ambulance call slip was stamped with the time of
1:18 PM [
"With Malice", page 101, 1998 edition].
JOHN IACOLETTI SAID:
Myers’ argument is that there is “strong evidence” that Brewer heard the report on KBOX merely because the other stations can be ruled out. That’s not strong evidence. I think false memory is the more reasonable conclusion. He needed a more solid justification for his suspicion of the guy who “looked funny”.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And, as I mentioned previously, KLIF is most certainly still in the running as the radio station Johnny Brewer was listening to on November 22, due to those 7 missing minutes that I cannot account for, beginning at 1:37 PM.
Plus, there were a few other radio stations in Dallas in 1963 that haven't been brought up in the discussion that are possible candidates too ---
WRR,
KVIL, and
KSKY. As of today (April 21, 2019), none of those stations can positively be ruled out as Brewer's station(s), and that's because the archived 11/22/63 recordings from those stations have not made their way into public circulation yet. But I'm hopeful that one day soon those recordings will become available.
According to
this forum thread started earlier this month by Denis Morissette, the National Archives is planning on digitizing (and—hopefully—releasing to the public on the
NARA website) many hours of audio material from those radio stations I just mentioned above (plus two others).
[
OCTOBER 2022 EDIT -- Also see
this post.]
JOHN IACOLETTI SAID:
I tend to agree with you, though, that 1:37 would be too late.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, yeah, John, I was thinking that same thing too (and you'll recall that I said that very thing in my previously posted
“Footnote” regarding the KLIF coverage).
But then I started to think that perhaps 1:37 isn't too late after all. After all, 1:37 is just a mere
one minute after 1:36, and
1:36 is the time that the world's leading researcher on the Tippit murder, Dale Myers, has used as the precise time when Lee Oswald appeared in the lobby of Brewer's store. So a 1:37 KLIF bulletin would not exactly be a million miles away from what Mr. Myers believes.
JOHN IACOLETTI SAID:
I’ll have to re-read it, but I don’t see what the basis could possibly be for claiming that 1:36 is a precise time.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I agree. A bracketed time
range would probably be more proper (such as, 1:30—1:40).
LANCE PAYETTE SAID ALL THIS.
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
Mr. Payette chooses to mock Brewer’s comment about the two “IBM men” as if that was an integral part of this case, says that Brewer is “a good candidate for The Least Suspicious Person On Earth,” and then goes on to insist he was a prevaricator. Mr. Payette’s dictum that the earliest testimony is usually the best, normally well founded advice, completely ignores a trainload of evidence that the FBI and the WC in this case altered witness statements and testimony, falsified physical evidence, made statements and documents disappear, and invented others out of whole cloth.
Mr. Payette tells us, “If you seriously don't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the man in the alcove of Hardy's, I have nothing further to say to you. You have gone down the rabbit hole.” He tells us, from deep within his own rabbit hole, to trust the Warren Commission and the FBI versions of witness statements and physical evidence in this case, which have been proven again and again to be unreliable and downright fraudulent.
But, of course, Warren Commission loyalists ignore all that and insist that we are nutty Conspiracy Theorists® who don’t make sense. Odd, and indefensible, but an old, old story.
PAUL JOLLIFFE SAID:
Gentlemen,
Combined with the Vincent Bugliosi interrogation of Brewer in the 1986 "trial" of LHO, we now have three filmed examples of cuts/splice/legal interruptions to Johnny Brewer's statement -- ALL AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT: THAT INSTANT WHEN BREWER IS BEGINNING TO DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED AFTER HE STEPPED OUT ONTO THE SIDEWALK AND WATCHED "THE MAN" ENTER THE TEXAS THEATER!
This is no coincidence.
This is not "bad luck."
This is not irrelevant.
This is not trivial.
No, there is only one reason why three different versions of the Johnny Brewer story all stop/splice/interrupt at the crucial moment. It's because Brewer's statement about returning to Hardy's was too explosive to be revealed - he talked to someone there, almost certainly the "IBM men" and they were a direct link to conspirators.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It's just incredible how anyone could actually put forth the above claptrap, even though there isn't a shred of
solid evidence to back up such a claim about the "IBM men" being "a direct link to conspirators".
Anyone promoting such sheer speculation should be ashamed to post at this forum (or any forum).
Whatever happened to the idea of providing some actual
EVIDENCE before jumping to a conclusion?
I hope this forum isn't starting to adopt the
Ralph Cinque Method Of Assassination Investigation (which is basically a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach where virtually any crackpot [and impossible] conspiracy theory is slapped up against the wall and expected to be taken seriously).
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
This from a man who wants us all to believe the Warren Commission Report!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The Warren Commission Report is based on a whole lot of
PROVABLE FACTS pertaining to Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt in two 1963 murders.
It would be the height of folly to compare the wild conspiracy-tinged speculation about the "IBM men" to the massive amount of
actual evidence presented by the Warren Commission.
JERRY FREEMAN SAID:
Johnny Brewer notices a guy and for some reason decides that he is suspicious and looks dangerous [puny Oswald?]... and there was never any corroboration concerning this observation.
Why is a reasonable doubt considered a
"big mistake"?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Because common sense (alone) dictates it's a "big mistake" to totally discount everything Johnny Brewer had to say.
Why, you ask?
Because there must have been
SOMETHING about Oswald and his demeanor on 11/22/63 that caused Brewer to leave his store and physically follow this guy (Oswald) up the street and into the Texas Theater. (And you surely don't deny that Brewer
did follow Oswald into the movie theater, do you? Remember, Brewer himself was grabbed initially by the police when he opened the back door of the theater. Or do some conspiracy theorists think that incident was fabricated too?)
In short....
If Oswald really
wasn't "acting funny" and looking "scared" and looking as if he had been "running" when Johnny Brewer saw him in the lobby of his shoe store, then please give me one good reason for Brewer wanting to follow this person up the street to the theater on November 22nd?
Any bright ideas? Or would you rather continue calling Johnny Calvin Brewer a big fat liar?
JERRY FREEMAN SAID:
What about the question to Brewer [during his
11/25/1996 interview]...
"...Can you remember when you heard about the Tippit killing--the shooting of the policeman?"
Answer...
"I've never really thought about it."
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And yet we have Brewer telling Eddie Barker of CBS this in 1964....
"Just a few minutes before he [Oswald] walked into the lobby, on the radio they had a bulletin that an officer had been shot here in Oak Cliff."
Go figure.
JERRY FREEMAN SAID:
Where is that "clear" bulletin? I have failed to hear it.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
That certainly doesn't mean no such bulletin existed. Go find the KBOX-Radio coverage from 1:15 PM to 1:35 PM. If you can find it, I'll bet you'd find the bulletin in question. But since it evidently wasn't preserved, all we can do is guess (and all the conspiracy theorists can do, therefore, is to pretend no such broadcast
ever existed).
CHARLES BLACKMON SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You, Charles, want Lone Assassin believers to explain why they think Oswald went into the Texas Theater on 11/22/63?
Well, okay. That's actually an easy one to figure out, Charles. Very easy....
Lee Harvey Oswald ducked inside the Texas Theater (without paying) shortly after he killed Police Officer J.D. Tippit because he figured that a nice dark movie theater would be a good place to hide out from the police---i.e., the police that Oswald knew would be searching the Oak Cliff area high and low for Tippit's killer.
And if it hadn't been for the very observant Johnny Brewer, Oswald might very well have succeeded in not being seen or detected while hiding out in the theater.
We can't know, of course, exactly how long Oswald would have stayed inside the movie theater if he hadn't been spotted by Brewer and then subsequently arrested just minutes later, but Oswald might have had it in his mind to stay in the theater until it got dark and then he could try to get away under the cloak of darkness.
That plan certainly makes sense to this "Lone Nut adherent" anyway.
GIL JESUS SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
To throw your own words back at you ---
You're kidding, right?!
You MUST be kidding here. Because nobody could possibly think Johnny Brewer was lying when he said Oswald went into the theater.
Why?
1.) Brewer, while standing on the sidewalk on Jefferson Boulevard in front of his Hardy's Shoe Store, sees Oswald approaching the Texas Theater.
2.) Brewer then sees Oswald
turn right toward the front entrance to the theater.
3.) Brewer then walks toward the theater himself.
4.) After starting to walk toward the theater and after reaching the front of the theater, at no time did Brewer see Oswald
come back out to the sidewalk on Jefferson.
5.) The logical conclusion that Johnny Brewer reached, therefore, was that the man who was acting "funny" and "scared" and "nervous" in front of his shoe store just a minute earlier (i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald)
must have physically entered the Texas Theater because (similar to the logical reasoning that explains where Bullet CE399 went after it came out of John F. Kennedy's throat)---
He had nowhere else to go but into the theater. (Unless you want to theorize that Oswald was able to cloak himself somehow and become invisible.)
GIL JESUS (INCREDIBLY) SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Boy, talk about taking something
OUT OF CONTEXT. Geez, this takes the cake, Gil!
When I said
"He had nowhere else to go but into the theater", I was (of course!) talking about what Brewer was observing with Oswald's movements when we add up my #1 thru #4 items on my previous list. I certainly
wasn't talking about what LHO's options were
PRIOR to the time when Oswald was seen walking in front of the theater.
Gil, you
knew you were taking my
"nowhere else to go" comment completely out of context, right?
[Gil's response to my post above was ......
Dead silence.]
JOHN IACOLETTI SAID:
It’s just a fact. If you can’t see somebody enter the theater, then you didn’t see him enter the theater. By the way, Brewer wasn’t watching the “funny-looking” man the entire time. He said he went back into the shoe store first and talked to the two “IBM men” who were hanging out there (?), and then walked down to the theater.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, John, I suppose you
could conceivably be right, but the
1996 interview that contains that information about Johnny Brewer going back into his shoe store after going out to the sidewalk to watch Oswald needs a little bit of clarification if you ask me.
Because in that '96 interview that Brewer had with Ian Griggs, Brewer seems to be saying (or at least implying) that he left the immediate area in front of his Hardy's Shoe Store
before he ever "went back" inside the shoe store. What I just said is, indeed, implied when Brewer told Griggs that his store was "locked" when he "came back" to the store. And according to Brewer's own chronology in that 1996 interview, that was
before he went up the street to the theater to talk to Julia Postal.
Now it stands to reason that if Brewer was merely standing a few feet outside the front door to his shoe store, why in the world would there be any need to lock the door? It seems logical to me to conclude that the only reason there would have been to lock the door would be if Brewer had gone some distance away from his store down the street.
But if Brewer was merely standing right
in front of his store the whole time (before going back inside), why would there be any need for either Brewer himself or the two IBM guys (who were in the store at the time) to physically lock up the property so that no more customers could enter?
The interview excerpts seen below, therefore, are telling me that Johnny Brewer might very well have gone up to the theater entrance a total of
two different times. Hence, we find Brewer telling Ian Griggs that he "went back" and "came back". And when Brewer said those words, he was referring to a point in time that was
BEFORE he ever went up to the theater to talk to Julia Postal.
If you, John Iacoletti, or anyone else reading this, has a better explanation for what we find in the interview excerpt seen below, please chime in and let me know what it is. But these remarks by Mr. Brewer sure make it sound as though Brewer walked up the street (i.e., some distance
away from his shoe store)
twice on 11/22/63.
ILG = Ian Griggs (interviewer);
JCB = Johnny Calvin Brewer:
JOHN IACOLETTI SAID:
Are you suggesting that Brewer walked all the way down to the theater, but didn’t talk to Postal, then went all the way back to his store, told the IBM men that he was going to go check, and then went back down to the theater? That makes ZERO sense.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I'm suggesting he went at least part way down toward the theater initially. Otherwise, the chronology that Brewer himself laid out in his
1996 interview makes ZERO sense too. The key portions that make zero sense
IF he really made only
one trip up to (or near) the theater entrance are these two sentences:
"When I came back, the store was locked. I said I'm going to check."
Obviously those two sentences, being in the order Brewer uttered them, would mean the store was locked
BEFORE he went down to the theater to "check". That makes no sense, unless he left the area of his store initially, thereby making the locking of the shoe store a necessity.
But this whole sub-topic of
"Did Brewer physically see Oswald go into the front doors of the Texas Theater?" is totally ridiculous, superfluous, and downright stupid in the first place.
Why?
Because we
KNOW without a shred of doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald
DID go into the Texas Theater on the afternoon of 11/22/63 and was apprehended by the Dallas Police Department at approximately 1:50 PM CST on that same afternoon while inside that same theater.
To deny my last statement is to deny a fact and to deny a physical reality.
And since everybody knows—even all conspiracy fantasists—that Oswald
was inside the movie theater between the hours of 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM CST on November 22nd, then somebody please tell me what the odds are of Johnny Brewer somehow being wrong (or lying) when he said he saw Lee Oswald go into the theater between the those same hours of 1:00 and 2:00 PM on 11/22/63?
David Von Pein
April 18-20, 2019
April 21, 2019
August 15, 2019
August 1-4, 2020
August 1-3, 2022
August 2, 2022
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ANOTHER ONE:
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