The Tippit Questions DVP Can't Answer: Virginia Davis (A Reprise Thread To Show Up The Kooks For What They Are -- I.E., Really Kooky!)
David Von Pein
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/9bf10425111d265e
==============================
DONALD "ARCE KILLED KENNEDY" WILLIS WROTE......
"{Tippit murder witnesses Virginia and Barbara Davis} did indeed call
the police first, after hearing gunfire."
DVP's REPLY......
That idea stems from Virginia Davis' testimony, when she said that a
phone call to the police had already been made from her house BEFORE
the two Davis ladies saw Lee Harvey Oswald cutting across their yard
following the shooting of Officer Tippit.
Virginia seemed a bit confused as to the exact time when the police
were called from the Davis residence....but let's examine this thing
logically, step-by-step:
1.) Both Davis women heard gunshots from outside their home.
2.) A man whom both Barbara Davis and Virginia Davis later positively
identified as Lee Harvey Oswald was then seen (by both Davis women)
walking briskly through the Davis' yard as he dumped empty bullet
cartridges onto the property.
3.) The police were called from the Davis house at some point after
the women heard the gunshots.
Now, unless Oswald was crawling on his hands and knees and moving
slower than Grandma Moses on crutches, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY
(realistically) that the Davis women could have had time to call the
police PRIOR to their seeing Oswald cut across their lawn. No way.
There was simply not enough time available.
Given the fact that Oswald obviously didn't just stand around on 10th
Street for a few minutes picking lint out of his belly-button after
killing a policeman in front of multiple eyewitnesses, the phone call
to the police from the Davis abode must have occurred AFTER Oswald had
cut through the Davis' yard.
Of course, in reality, it doesn't make a solitary bit of difference
exactly when the police were phoned from the Davis residence, because
both women later IDed Oswald as the man they had seen unloading a gun
while cutting across their front and side yards on November 22, 1963.
CTers like to paint any slight inconsistency in witness testimony as
something "shady" or "conspiratorial"....even when they haven't a leg
to stand on when so doing. (Like in this totally-meaningless "When
Were The Police Called?" instance.)
Let me also add this very important information (which is info/
evidence that has to be totally ignored by the CT-Kooks like Donald in
order for them to buy into the "Police Were Called First"
balderdash).....
Based on each of the two Davis ladies' 11/22/63 affidavits, it's
crystal-clear that the police were called from the Davis apartment
house only AFTER the Davises had seen Oswald cut across their yard.
Let's have a look at these two affidavits:
"I heard a shot and jumped up and heard another shot. I put on my
shoes and went to the door and I saw this man walking across my front
yard unloading a gun. A woman was standing across the street screaming
that 'he shot him, he killed him' and pointed towards a police
car. ... I ran back in the house and called the operator and reported
this to the police. ... The #2 man in a 4-man lineup was the same man
I saw in my yard, also the one that was unloading the gun." -- Signed,
Barbara Jeanette Davis; 11/22/63
~~~~~
"We heard a shot and then another shot and ran to the side door at
Patton Street. I saw the boy cutting across our yard and he was
unloading his gun. We walked outside and a woman was hollering 'he's
dead, he's dead, he's shot'. This woman told Jeanette {Barbara Davis}
to call the police; and she did. I saw the officer that had been shot
lying on Tenth Street after Jeanette had called the police. Jeanette
found {an} empty shell that the man had unloaded and gave it to the
police. ... The man that was unloading the gun was the same man I saw
tonight as number 2 man in a lineup." -- Signed, Mrs. Virginia Davis;
11/22/63
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/bdavis.htm
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/vdavis.htm
Perry (Kook version).....your witness.
eca...@tx.rr.com
I repeat myself on this ongoing
praise of you because it's true
and I READ your posts.. Something
I honestly wonder if the TSFH
gang does btw.. Anyway a certain
poster keeps zapping me for
praising you too often, but so
what? It's justified..
Regards,
Ed Cage 1657Mar707
David Von Pein
I appreciate your comments very much. :)
tomnln
On 2/11/07 ed cage wrote;
> I will address each of the 3 or 4 but
> at some point I'd like to know your
> source(s) for each claim you "quote"
> Quite frankly there's so much subjective
> BS on your site I'm a little leary of you
> just saying "here's what happened and
> what Baker did" ..
We are STILL Waiting.
ChickenShit Interstate Plumber.
<eca...@tx.rr.com> wrote in message
news:1173308265.1...@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com...
tomnln
"David Von Pein" <davev...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1173308830.9...@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com...
dcwi...@netscape.net
An alternate view:
Mrs. Markham and the Second Gunman
In "Tippit & the Second Gunman," I concentrated on the identity of of
this
gunman, apparently a witness mistaken by other witnesses at the Tippit
shooting
scene for the killer of the officer. The evidence seems to undercut
the
standard Warren Report/With Malice, Scoggins-to-Callaway-to-Benavides
story, &
to support DPD Sgt. Kenneth Croy's report that a "cab driver had
picked up
Tippit's gun... and attempted to give chase..." (Warren Commission
Hearings v12
p202)--to wit, William Scoggins, one of six witnesses who identified
Lee Harvey
Oswald as the killer, in police lineups, in 1963. Here, I'll deal the
identity
of the "six to eight witnesses"--in the phrase of officers Joe Poe and
Leonard
Jez--who saw the cab driver "running west in the alley between Tenth
and
Jefferson Streets." ("With Malice" p487) Were they witnesses who got
away &
were never heard from again? Or are they people whose names we know
very well?
The Warren Commission did not address this issue with Poe. (v7
pp68-9) As
noted, Jimmy Burt is the most readily identifiable of these late-
comers to the
scene who mistook Scoggins for the killer.
Frank Cimino's December 3, 1963 FBI interview suggested that Mrs.
Helen Markham
might be the second such witness--she indicated to him that the gunman
had run
into the "alley which runs between Tenth Street and Jefferson off
Patton
Street." (WM p538) But his was second-hand evidence. And at the
Warren
Commission Hearings, all she said was that she had last seen the
killer running
"towards Jefferson." (v3 p308) However, a November 15, 1977 House
Select
Committee on Assassinations interview apparently revived the issue:
"In later years, Markham stated the killer cut across the southwest
corner of
Tenth and Patton and fled west down the alley between Patton and
Jefferson.
Markham's son showed HSCA investigators in 1977 how a path on this
southwest
corner lot 'leads to the alley that borders the parking lot where the
jacket was
later found'." (WM pp216-17)
Dale Myers suggests that Mrs. Markham picked up the "westward in the
alley"
story from witnesses Burt and William Smith: "It's likely Markham's
new version
of events was a second hand story that grew out of her son's contact
with
Smith." (WM p217) But, as I noted, Burt and Smith's tale of
witnessing the
gunman only at the far (Crawford) end of the alley--from their vantage
point at
the Patton end--was itself a revised "version of events," which
contradicted
their various statements in 1963. And Cimino's comments suggest that
Markham's
statements "in later years" may have had some basis in her original
observations
on November 22, 1963.
Mrs. Markham vs the Davises (I)
>From the beginning, the Markham story was inextricably bound up with the Davis
story--Barbara Jeanette and Virginia Davis, that is, the sisters-in-
law who
heard two shots, then quickly ran to the door of their house on the
southeast
corner of 10th and Patton and spotted a man with a gun. Or, rather,
spotted
Mrs. Markham, from (as they testified) the vantage point of their
front door on
10th St.:
Counsel: What did you see?
Barbara Jeanette Davis: Mrs. Markham standing across the street over
there, &
she was standing over there, & the man was coming across the yard....
Counsel: And what did you see the man doing?
Davis: Well, first off, [Mrs. Markham] went to screaming before I had
paid too
much attention to [the gunman], and pointing at him. And he was, what
I
thought, was emptying the gun. (v3 p343)
Virginia Davis: Well, Mrs. Markham was trying to say.... We heard her
say, "He
shot him. He is dead. Call the police".... She was screaming it.
Counsel: Did you see anything else as you heard her screaming?
Davis: We saw that boy cut across the lawn emptying the shells out of
the gun.
(v6 pp456-7)
In other words, at that point--when the Davises first looked out--the
screaming
Mrs. Markham drew their attention before the gunman did. In fact,
they didn't
really seem to notice him until she screamed and pointed him out. At
the
hearings, Virginia almost forgets even to mention him--but, with a
little
prompting, she does....
Commission Exhibit 523 describes how, according to the Davises, the
gunman cut
across their front yard, at the southeast corner of 10th and Patton,
and
disappeared through the bushes near the corner of the house. (v17
p228)
Barbara Jeanette Davis: "He cut across the middle of the yard." (v3
p344)
Virginia Davis: "Well, he just cut across. He disappeared from
behind the
corner of the house." (v6 p460) Thus, they testified, did they lose
sight of
him before he reached Patton St. And so it would seem that they could
not have
been two of the Poe-Jez "six to eight witnesses"--the two say that
they did not
see him on Patton at all.
At first glance, the Markham version of the kitty-corner encounter
might seem
pretty much the same. But there are very curious differences.
Markham: After he shot the policeman, he turned around, came back
around toward
Patton St.... He seen me, and he stops... when he saw me. That is the
reason we
were looking at each other. I put my hands over my face and closed my
eyes,
because I knew he was going to kill me. I couldn't scream. I
couldn't holler.
I froze.
Mr. Dulles: I think you testified about that then he began to run
slowly. Was
that after he saw you?
Markham: Yes, after I put my hands up, and when I had opened my
fingers and my
eyes and slowly pulled them down, he was trotting off. (v3 p321)
Counsel: Was the man anywhere near that corner when you saw him?
Markham: Yes, he was.
Counsel: Put an "X" [on CE 521] as to the point when he looked at you,
and you
looked at him. (v3 p312)
[CE 521: An "X" is marked on the sidewalk where the man stopped, at
the
southeast corner of 10th and Patton. Mrs. Markham was on the northwest
corner.
(v17 p228)]
In other words, Mrs. Markham, like Burt, testified that the gunman ran
directly
to the intersection of 10th & Patton--that he did *not* cut across the
yard.
Markham: He ran back, turned, and came back down 10th to Patton St.
He cut
across Patton St. like this.
Counsel: Heading toward what street?
Markham: Toward Jefferson. Yes, sir. Then he was still in sight
when I began
to scream and holler.... (v3 p312)
Mrs. Markham vs the Davises (II)
Recall that both Davises said that they first noticed the screaming
Mrs.
Markham, & *then*, & only then, really noticed the gunman. Mrs.
Markham is very
precise here: When she and the gunman looked at each other--from
opposite
corners of 10th and Patton--she could not scream or holler. It was
only *after*
he began to trot away from her, "across Patton... toward Jefferson,"
that she
could begin to scream. If that screaming drew the attention of the
Davises to
the man, then it could have been only--as per Mrs. Markham--as he
crossed
Patton.
Mrs. Markham is often painted as a hopeless hysteric, but here her
actions seem
quite reasonable. She did not start shouting and pointing at the
gunman and
calling attention to herself, as he ran towards her--as the Davises
maintain--and she was still directly in harm's way. She began
directing
attention to him only *after* he began running away from her, up
Patton. In
other words, she was no fool, though the testimony of the Davises
makes her look
like one. At this particular juncture of their testimony, Mrs.
Markham comes
off as more credible than the Davises.
But how--or under what circumstances--would the Davises have noticed
Mrs.
Markham first, and the gunman only afterwards? Most of the Davises'
testimony
has the two coming to the front door, where a gunman cutting across
their front
yard would have been very much in their foreground, while Mrs.
Markham--kitty
corner across 10th and Patton--would have been very much in the
background (if
louder)and perhaps partially obscured by bushes at the west edge of
the yard.
(See the photos on pages 66-7 & 74 of "With Malice.") The scene as
described by
the Davises does not make a whole lot of sense. On the other hand,
the scene
could not have happened as Mrs. Markham testified, either, if the two
were at
their front door, & could not see much of Patton St. One curious
slip, however,
by Virginia Davis--in her original affidavit--suggests that the
Davises may
*not* have been at the front door: "We heard a shot and then another
shot and
ran to [the] side door at Patton Street." (v24 p206)
This may just be the missing puzzle piece which validates the Markham
version of
the scene. Before the Warren Commission, she consistently testified
that she
began to scream only *after* she saw the gunman trotting away from
her, up and
across Patton, towards Jefferson. If the Davises took in the scene as
*they*
both testified--the screamer first, the gunman second--then the two
had to have
been at the side door on Patton: They could not have seen him running
up Patton
from their front door. And from the vantage point of the side door,
the gunman
would have been running away from *them*, too, & here his receding (&
quieter)
figure would have been less immediately conspicuous, in this tableau,
than that
of the screaming woman across the intersection.
4) The Late Mrs M
All three women, then--in the corrected, Markham-based version of the
scene--would have been watching the gunman run up Patton. They were
all, then,
in a position to see the entrance to the alley on the west side of the
street.
What would they have seen? Consider the diverse testimony of four
men--Croy,
Poe, Cimino, and DPD Crime Scene photographer W.E. "Pete" Barnes--re
the
shooting scene. All four had only one witness in common--Helen
Markham.
Cimino, in fact, in his FBI interview, spoke of only one other witness
besides
himself, a woman "dressed like a waitress" who said that the gunman
had run west
and who "pointed in the direction of an alley...." Croy--who cited an
unsourced
report that a "cab driver had picked up Tippit's gun"--called Mrs.
Markham the
"main eyewitness," and devoted the lion's share of his testimony re
the Tippit
scene to her, though he did not expressly link her to the report.
(v12
pp201-203)
The November 22nd Poe-Jez report refers specifically to only two
witnesses, Mrs.
Markham and Domingo Benavides (WM p487); Poe, in his testimony before
the
commission, spoke there only of Mrs. Markham ("I talked to her
first"),
Benavides, and one of the Davises. (v7 pp68-9) Finally, although Sgt.
Barnes
mentioned no Tippit witness by name during his testimony, he said that
he was
"told that the suspect which shot Tippit had come up to the right side
of the
[squad] car, and there was a possibility that he might have placed his
hands on
there"--he, Barnes, then proceeded to "check the right side of
Tippit's car for
fingerprints." (v7 p272) In fact, it was Mrs. Markham who described
the gunman
leaning down over the front passenger window (v3 p307)--TV news
photographer Ron
Reiland's footage shows Barnes listening as fellow officers question
Mrs.
Markham by the window. (WM p152)
However, it appears that Barnes' ears here picked up more than just
her
discussion of the window: In his sketch of the Tippit crime scene, he
mapped
out only 10th Street, Patton... and the alley running west off
Patton. Even
more to the point: the note appended to the bottom of Barnes' map,
which reads:
"W on alley to Crawford left on Crawford to E Jefferson 300 blk.--W on
Jefferson
to Texas Theater in 200 blk." (WM p161) Not a word about Jefferson.
Barnes
charted only four distances, in feet, for his sketch--three of them on
10th, &
one on Patton: "210 ft.," the distance on Patton from 10th to the
alley. "W on
alley..."
Mrs. Markham, it seems, was telling anyone who would listen--Barnes,
Poe, Croy,
Capt. Talbert, Capt. Westbrook--that the gunman had run west in the
alley off
Patton. And she was telling them so on November 22, 1963, not just
"in later
years." And the police, at first, were listening to *her*, not to
Patrolman
Summers' "Jefferson" witness--because, at that point, it still must
have seemed
to them possible that the latter was (in Reiland's words) the man who
had the
gun that was "used to shoot the police officer"....
Mrs. Markham was also, apparently, that day, giving police and
reporters a
controversial description of the alley gunman--one, that is, which did
not fit
Oswald: "short, a little on the heavy side, with somewhat bushy
hair... Oswald
possessed none of those characteristics." (Mark Lane, "Rush to
Judgment,"
pp183, 188) Lane did not cite the source of his information, but
Dallas Morning
News reporter Hugh Aynesworth told Dale Myers that it was *he* who
merely
*interpreted* Mrs. Markham's comments re the gunman's hair as meaning
"bushy,"
the word which turned up in a story re her observations in the
newspaper's
November 23, 1963 edition. (WM p219) But that does not explain why
patrolmen
Poe and Jez also used the phrase "bushy hair" when reporting her
description of
the man, in *their* report. (WM p487) A fair assumption would be that
Mrs.
Markham herself was the source for the phrase for both the report and
the
newspaper--and the source, also, for the other descriptive details
cited by
Lane.
"Lane told readers that Markham's statements show that Tippit's killer
was not
Oswald." (WM p218) But it's now apparent that her statements showed
only that
she did not, in fact, see Tippit's killer. She saw a second gunman
*chasing*
the first. She had no way of knowing whether or not the killer was
Oswald.
Whom did she see? Check the photo on page 227 in "With Malice": The
relatively
short, stocky man with the bushy eyebrows is... cab driver William
Scoggins.
The only salient features which the latter and the shooter had in
common--that
weekend, at least--were a short, zippered jacket and dark trousers.
The answer
to the Markham and Scoggins puzzle seems to be contained in Reiland's
same-day
news footage and narration: It is *she* who is shown talking to
police at
Tippit's car (WM pp150, 152, 292), and it is most probably *she* who
told them
that the gun--which actually proved to be Tippit's--was the "one that
was used
to shoot the police officer." (WM p299) At this point in time--about
1:42pm--at
this scene, the point-of-view had to have been *hers*--for both the
police and
Reiland. She must have been quite upset when the "killer" returned to
the scene
of his crime, brandishing the murder weapon. The police were then
left to sort
out the conflicting stories of these two key witnesses.
Irony: Mrs Markham, then, did not get to 10th & Patton too *early* to
have seen
Oswald shoot Tippit--as conspiracy theorists hold--she got there too
*late* to
have seen the killer at all....
4) Who's Afraid of Virginia Davis?
Who, now, were among those "six to eight witnesses" re the gunman in
the alley?
Most probably, Burt, Smith, Mrs. Markham, Barbara Jeanette Davis,
Virginia
Davis, and--we'll look at this more closely later--Domingo Benavides.
Irony:
None of these witnesses saw Tippit's killer, whether he was Oswald or
an Oswald
lookalike and dressalike. It had to have been about two minutes after
the
shooting that Burt saw the man enter the alley. (12/15/63 FBI
interview/WM p383)
And the Davises' testimony that they heard only two shots (v6p456 &
v3p343)--the
last two of at least four--strongly suggests that they were late
getting to the
side door, that they were not just lying down at the time of the
shooting, but
asleep, and were awoken by the sounds of shooting, then drawn outside
only by
Mrs. Markham's belated screams.
Even more strongly suggestive that the Davises got to the door in time
only to
see a second gunman in hot pursuit of the first is an insistent,
bizarre strain
in Virginia Davis' testimony which has, for decades, remained
inexplicable. At
first, it might appear--from a reading of that testimony--that she was
simply
addled. But now it seems more likely that she had not been
completely weaned
from the truth of what she saw. The difference between the sisters-in-
law seems
to have been that the one, Barbara Jeanette, wanted to help the
police, while
the other, Virginia, wanted to tell the truth. In fact, at one point
or
another, Virginia let just about every conspiracy cat out of the bag,
& WC
counsel was hard pressed to stuff all those cats back in. Ultimately,
they
succeeded, but it wasn't easy: *Eight or 9 times*--in the course of
her WC
testimony--she states that she and Barbara Jeanette called the police
*before*
they saw the gunman:
Davis: Jeanette called the police, & we went back, & he was cutting
across the
yard....
Belin: Did you call the police before or after you saw him cut across
the yard?
Davis: Before. (v6p458)
Belin: You saw him go around the corner of your home?
Davis: Yes.
Belin: What did you do or see then?
Davis: Well, we just went out, because we had already called the
police,
notified them, & we went out in the yard.
Belin: You notified the police. Let me ask you this. Did you notify
the
police before or after you saw the boy with the gun?
Davis: Let's see. I think it was before.
Belin: When you say "before," what do you mean?
Davis: Well, before we saw the boy.
Belin: Before you saw the boy you notified the police?
Davis: Yes, sir. (p460)
Davis: We went to the phone & called the police.
Belin: Then what did you do?
Davis: Then we went back to the front door.
Belin: Then what did you do?
Davis: We saw the boy cutting across the street. (p461)
Belin: Now, according to this statement, you saw the man cutting
across your
yard before you called the police?
Davis: No, sir.
Belin: Now, this statement is wrong--is that correct?
Davis: That's right.
Belin: It is your testimony, now, as I understand it, that you went
back in the
house & you called the police, & then you went back outside the house
& saw the
boy cutting across the yard?
Davis: That's right. (p464)
Obviously, Virginia Davis did not fully realize that--in order to
validate her
ID of Oswald as the killer--she had to get the sequence of events
"right."
Eventually, Belin wrenched her from the teat of truth, but in the
meantime,
in-between time, note that, above, within the more obvious "slip"--as
she says
phone call *before* for about the 6th time--there is a more subtle
"slip":
"We saw the boy cutting across the street."
Phone call to police, *before*... then, "side door"... "Patton
Street"... and
"boy cutting across the *street*." Was the road to Virginia Davis's
ID of
Oswald as arduous as her road to *after* here?* Although, that is,
she ID'd
Oswald, it could not have been Oswald whom she saw, not if Barbara
Jeanette
Davis called the police *before* they saw the "boy" crossing Patton
St. Like
fellow witness LJ Lewis, Virginia Davis seems to have been describing
Oswald,
but it can't have been the killer of Tippit whom Davis, Lewis, & Burt
saw "a few
minutes" after the sound of shots (Lewis affidavit/v15 p703). Lewis,
also,
swears that he called the cops *before* he saw the gunman, & he was
consistent
in describing a time gap between the shooting & the running man. In
his
1/22/64 FBI report, he states that it was "approximately one minute,"
& B.M.
Patterson also put the gap at "a minute or so." (WM pp547 & 548,
resp.) Lewis &
Patterson may have been the 7th & 8th of the Poe-Jez "6 to 8
witnesses."
*Eventually, Belin got his way on pretty nearly every isue here--
Virginia
pleased him no end by finally getting the order *right* re boy/call,
boy/Markham, & ambulance/police (v6 pp467-8). He earned his pay that
day & no
doubt slept well that night, though *she* may not have. Compare
Belin's
fanatical insistence here re Proper Order with the Commission's
carelessness re
same in the case of Scoggins, Callaway, Benavides, & the radio logs.
5) Coda: Why Mrs M Had To Play the Madwoman of Oak Cliff
In sum: Of the six Tippit lineup eyewitnesses, one--Scoggins--must
have seen
the shooter at close enough range to know that he was not Oswald...
one--Guinyard--was apparently fooled by this Oswald lookalike...
one--Callaway--probably saw no gunman at all... and *three*--Mrs.
Markham and
the Davises--saw only Scoggins, pursuing Tippit's killer.
It is now possible to explain precisely why Mrs. Markham had to become
Patrolman
Summers' witness who "talked to the officer." (police radio tapes/CE
705 p27)
Return to one sentence of her testimony which was quoted, in part,
earlier:
"Then [the gunman] was still in sight when I began to scream and
holler and run
to this police car--well, to Mr. Tippit." (v3p312)
The portrait of Mrs. Markham as Madame Hysteria began, as noted, with
the
Davises. It was completed by herself. Up to that precise point where
she
shifts gears, above, and testifies that she ran to the police car, she
was
apparently allowed to tell this midsection of her story as it
actually
happened.* But both the witness & Barnes/Poe/Jez evidence suggests
that she did
*not* run to Tippit when she began to "scream and holler"--she stood
right where
she was and watched the man run into the alley.
Happily--for the conspirators--the man she watched was apparently the
same man
who routinely talked to Tippit. She became Summers' talker, & thus
did the
fictitious Madame Hysteria--with a wave of her wand--make Scoggins
disappear, at
once, from Tippit's company--(before the shooting), from the alleyway
(just
after the shooting), & from Summers' car (about 20 minutes later).
Madame H's
hat trick....
*In all probability, she initially picked up the action just as
Scoggins was
running up to the squad car, from Patton, and looking in the front
passenger
window, perhaps to see if Tippit was there. Her over-detailed account
of the
lazy, monumentally uneventful scene leading up to the shooting (v3
pp306-8)
seems another indication that she did not arrive at 10th and Patton as
early as
supposed.
copr. 2001 Donald Willis