THE TESTIMONY OF BARBARA DAVIS
David Von Pein
EXAMINING THE TESTIMONY OF BARBARA DAVIS:
====================================
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0175b.htm
22-year-old Barbara Jeanette Davis is a key witness to one of the two
murders committed by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963. Mrs.
Davis (along with her 16-year sister-in-law, Virginia Davis) witnessed
the aftermath of police officer J.D. Tippit's murder approximately 45
minutes after President Kennedy had been shot just a few miles away in
Dealey Plaza.
The Davis ladies lived in an apartment house located on the corner of
10th Street and Patton Avenue in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff. Each
of the Davises testified pretty much the same way regarding the things
each of them saw take place after hearing gunshots from just outside
their apartment building.
Each of the Davis ladies later positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald
as the man they saw "unloading a gun" as he crossed their yard at the
corner of Tenth & Patton.
Here are some excerpts from Barbara Davis' 1964 Warren Commission
testimony:
==============================
JOSEPH BALL. On that day did something unusual happen that you
observed, on November 22nd?
BARBARA J. DAVIS. Those gunshots.
Mr. BALL. Gunshots? Where were you when you heard gunshots?
Mrs. DAVIS. In bed.
ALLEN DULLES. Did you say gunshot or gunshots?
Mrs. DAVIS. Shots.
Mr. DULLES. Plural? How many did you hear?
Mrs. DAVIS. Just two, they were pretty close together.
Mr. BALL. You were lying on the bed. What did you do?
Mrs. DAVIS. I got up, put my shoes on to see what it was.
Mr. BALL. Did you ever go outdoors?
Mrs. DAVIS. At first, I didn't.
Mr. BALL. When you went to the door, did you open the door?
Mrs. DAVIS. I opened the door and held the screen opened.
Mr. BALL. What did you see?
Mrs. DAVIS. Mrs. Markham standing across the street over there, and
she was standing over there and the man was coming across the yard.
Mr. BALL. A man was coming across what yard?
Mrs. DAVIS. My yard.
Mr. BALL. And what did you see the man doing?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, first off she [Markham] went to screaming before I
had paid too much attention to him, and pointing at him, and he was,
what I thought, was emptying the gun.
Mr. BALL. He had a gun in his hand?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. And he was emptying it?
Mrs. DAVIS. It was open and he had his hands cocked like he was
emptying it.
[Later....]
GERALD R. FORD. You saw him take the shells out of the gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir; he was shaking them.
Mr. FORD. He was shaking them?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was shaking them. I didn't see him actually use his
hand to take them out. I mean he was sort of shaking them out.
[DVP: The remarks from both Barbara Davis (above) and also from
Virginia Davis completely destroy the notion advanced by many
conspiracy theorists that Tippit's murderer used an "automatic" weapon
to kill the officer.
If an automatic gun had really been the murder weapon, there would
have been no need for the gunman to physically open the gun and dump
the empty cartridges out of it.
Furthermore, if an automatic had been used to kill Tippit, any
expended bullet shells would have been found much closer to Tippit's
police car, which was located many yards away from the Davis apartment
building.
Do CTers think that Tippit was killed by a person using an automatic,
and then the killer (or somebody) picked up the AUTOMATICALLY-EJECTED
CARTRIDGES and dumped them in the Davises' yard? (Weird theory
there.)]
==============================
Mr. BALL. What did you do next?
Mrs. DAVIS. He looked at her [Markham] first and looked at me and then
smiled and went around the corner.
Mr. BALL. Was he running or walking?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was walking at his normal pace.
Mr. BALL. And he went around the corner? Did he go on the sidewalk?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. He was on the sidewalk right beside the house.
Mr. BALL. Did he cut across your lawn at all?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Where?
Mrs. DAVIS. He cut across the middle of the yard.
==============================
Mr. BALL. Were you shown a group of people in the police station and
asked if you could identify the man?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. ....
Mr. BALL. How many men were shown to you in this lineup?
Mrs. DAVIS. Four.
Mr. BALL. Were they of the same size or of different sizes?
Mrs. DAVIS. Most of them was about the same size.
Mr. BALL. All white men, were they?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Did you recognize anyone in that room?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir. I recognized number 2.
Mr. BALL. Number 2 you recognized? Did you tell any policeman there
anything after you recognized them?
Mrs. DAVIS. I told the man who had brought us down there.
Mr. BALL. What did you tell him?
Mrs. DAVIS. That I thought number 2 was the man that I saw. ....
Mr. BALL. By number 2, was the man you saw the man you saw doing what?
Mrs. DAVIS. Unloading the gun.
Mr. BALL. And going across your yard?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. That was about what time of day that you were at the lineup?
Mrs. DAVIS. It was after 8, I am sure.
Mr. BALL. After when?
Mrs. DAVIS. After 8 o'clock.
Mr. BALL. On what day?
Mrs. DAVIS. On Friday, the same day.
Mr. BALL. The same day? It was after 8 o'clock on Friday, the same day
that you had seen the man unloading the gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
==============================
Mr. BALL. Let's go back to that afternoon [November 22, 1963], and you
give your best memory of what the man looked like. Don't think of what
anybody has told you or what has happened in between. Try to remember
the vision you had of that man--the color of his hair, the size of his
build and so forth.
Mrs. DAVIS. You mean weight and like that?
Mr. BALL. He was white, wasn't he?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Light complexioned, or dark?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was more light complected than he would have been dark.
Mr. BALL. Color of his hair?
Mrs. DAVIS. It was either dark brown or black. It was just dark hair.
Mr. BALL. And the color of his clothes?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, I said he had on--he looked to me that he had on
dark trousers, and it looked like a light-colored shirt, with a dark
coat over it.
Mr. BALL. About what age would you say the man was?
Mrs. DAVIS. I am not very good on that. I don't know. I would say he
was about 23, 24.
Mr. BALL. And what about his weight and height? .... You have to be
general, I know that.
Mr. DULLES. Just your best recollection. If you haven't any, just tell
us.
Mrs. DAVIS. I just don't know.
Mr. BALL. Was he fat or slender?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was slender built, and not very heavy.
Mr. BALL. Was he a tall man, or a real short man, or average?
Mrs. DAVIS. Oh, he wasn't especially tall. I would say he was about
medium height or a little taller. I mean he wasn't extra tall.
Mr. BALL. Now, did you have some difficulty in identifying this No. 2
man in the showup when you saw him?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, they made us look at him a long time before they let
us say anything.
Mr. BALL. What about you? I am not talking about what you told them.
What was your reaction when you saw this man?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, I was pretty sure it was the same man I saw. When
they made him turn sideways, I was positive that was the one I seen.
[DVP: The "Number 2" man in the police lineup was, of course, Lee
Harvey Oswald.]
==============================
Mr. BALL. Where was he when you saw him emptying his gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was right here on the other side of this bush. ....
Mr. DULLES. Did you know at the time he was emptying his gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. That is what I presumed, because he had it open and was
shaking it. ....
Mr. BALL. After the man left, what did you do, after he went out of
sight what did you do?
Mrs. DAVIS. I went back in and phoned the police.
Mr. BALL. Then what did you tell the police?
Mrs. DAVIS. I just told them that a policeman had been shot.
Mr. BALL. Then what did you do?
Mrs. DAVIS. I came back outside and walked down to where the
policeman's car was out.
Mr. BALL. Did you see the policeman?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Where was he?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was laying on the left-hand side of the car on the
ground, by the left-hand fender.
Mr. BALL. Was he alive or what?
Mrs. DAVIS. I don't know.
Mr. BALL. Did he talk?
Mrs. DAVIS. No.
Mr. BALL. You didn't know whether he was alive or dead?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir; I didn't get that close.
Mr. BALL. How long did you stay there?
Mrs. DAVIS. Not 5 minutes, I would imagine, because the police cars
started coming, so I went back to my yard. ....
Mr. BALL. Did you later look in the bushes and find something?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes; in the grass beside the house.
Mr. BALL. The grass beside the house. What did you find?
Mrs. DAVIS. We found one shell.
Mr. BALL. One shell?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. And your sister-in-law, did your sister-in-law find
something else?
Mrs. DAVIS. She found one later in the afternoon.
Mr. BALL. One, later?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Can you show me on one of these pictures here where you
found one shell?
Mrs. DAVIS. Under the window here. That would be the only one I could
tell.
Mr. BALL. The only one that shows, it is photo 3, it is Commission
Exhibit 534. Draw an arrow down.
Mrs. DAVIS. Right under that window there.
Mr. BALL. Under that window. The arrow which is marked "D-1" shows the
position where you found one shell. Did you see your sister-in- law
find the other shell?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Where was that found?
Mrs. DAVIS. There is a little cement walk right here by her door, it
was right there, not too far from there.
Mr. BALL. Could you draw an arrow down to show the approximate
position?
Mrs. DAVIS. It was almost in front of her door, there is a little
cement porch to step up to her door.
[DVP: So, as we can see from this testimony, EACH of the two Davis
ladies found one shell after the shooting....with each of these two
shells being ballistically linked to the gun that was in the
possession of Lee Harvey Oswald when he was apprehended in the Texas
Theater about 35 minutes after Officer Tippit was slain.
In addition to the Davises, one other witness (Domingo Benavides)
found two additional bullet shells near the front yard of the Davis
residence very shortly after the shooting. Those two shells were also
linked "to the exclusion of all other weapons" to Lee Oswald's Smith &
Wesson .38 revolver -- the same gun he tried to use on more policemen
within the theater.
So that makes THREE different civilians who initially picked up bullet
shells near the corner of Tenth & Patton on November 22nd. And all
four of those shells matched Oswald's gun.
Even if some conspiracists want to argue the "chain of possession" of
the two shells found by Benavides (as CTers often do argue, due to a
discrepancy regarding the marking of those shells by DPD Officer J.M.
Poe)....what possible argument can those same CTers use to combat the
rock-solid chain of custody with respect to the two shells discovered
by Barbara and Virginia Davis?
As far as I know, no conspiracy theorists have ever claimed that BOTH
of the Davis shells are "tainted" in some fashion. And if those are
really shells that came out of Oswald's gun on 11/22/63, then Lee
Harvey Oswald is guilty of murdering J.D. Tippit beyond all doubt.
And since the overwhelming evidence indicates that there was ONLY ONE
PERSON WITH A GUN shooting anybody on Tenth Street on November 22, and
since that ONE PERSON with a gun dumped bullet shells from the ONE AND
ONLY GUN that was used to commit the murder of Officer Tippit....it
stands to reason (when just a small amount of common sense is applied)
that ALL FOUR BULLET SHELLS that were found by the three different
witnesses on 10th Street ALL CAME OUT OF THE VERY SAME GUN.
And since there's no dispute whatsoever about the two shells found by
the Davis girls--those shells positively came from Oswald's gun--this
has to mean, logically, that the other two shells found by Benavides
MUST have come out of the very same gun as well.
And since the ONLY PERSON WITH A GUN on 10th Street was positively
identified as Lee Harvey Oswald by many different witnesses after the
murder, including Barbara Davis and Virginia Davis (who both came
within just a few feet of Tippit's killer on November 22), there can't
be much doubt about the following conclusion:
Lee Harvey Oswald, by himself, killed Officer J.D. Tippit with Lee
Harvey Oswald's very own gun.]
==============================
Barbara Davis' 11/22/63 Affidavit:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/bdavis.htm
==============================
robcap...@netscape.com
> EXAMINING THE TESTIMONY OF BARBARA DAVIS:
I guess Dave is going to do this with every witness the WC deposed. Oh
well, here we go again.
> ====================================
>
> http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_017...
"22-year-old Barbara Jeanette Davis is a key witness to one of the two
murders committed by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963. Mrs.
Davis (along with her 16-year sister-in-law, Virginia Davis) witnessed
the aftermath of police officer J.D. Tippit's murder approximately 45
minutes after President Kennedy had been shot just a few miles away in
Dealey Plaza."
Never proven that LHO shot and killed JDT so you are asserting your
opinion as fact yet again. How about laying some real physical
evidence on us for a change?
"The Davis ladies lived in an apartment house located on the corner of
10th Street and Patton Avenue in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff. Each
of the Davises testified pretty much the same way regarding the things
each of them saw take place after hearing gunshots from just outside
their apartment building.
Each of the Davis ladies later positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald
as the man they saw "unloading a gun" as he crossed their yard at the
corner of Tenth & Patton.'
We'll see about this statement.
==============================
Mrs. DAVIS. In bed.
Mrs. DAVIS. Shots.
Mrs. DAVIS. My yard.
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Now all of this is above board and part of her testimony, but Dave
cuts away at the crucial part, why? What a dirty trick readers, but
I'm here to continue with her next statements.
Mr. DULLES. Which hand did he have it?
Mrs. DAVIS. Right hand.
Mr. BALL. To his left palm?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. **Did you see him throw anything away?
Mrs. DAVIS. No.**
Mr. BALL. You didn't?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Notice she did NOT see him actually throw shells away, she just saw
him acting like he was emptying the gun. Why would the man do this?
I would guess the shells were left by someone else to frame LHO, but
they messed this up as well as the shells she found and turned over to
the police were NOT the same ones she was shown later by the WC.
"[Later....]
GERALD R. FORD. You saw him take the shells out of the gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir; he was shaking them.
Mr. FORD. He was shaking them?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was shaking them. I didn't see him actually use his
hand to take them out. I mean he was sort of shaking them out.
[DVP: The remarks from both Barbara Davis (above) and also from
Virginia Davis completely destroy the notion advanced by many
conspiracy theorists that Tippit's murderer used an "automatic" weapon
to kill the officer."
Sure he couldn't have put the gun in his pocket and pulled out a prop
gun, right? Why did she say earlier she did NOT see him throw anything
away?
"If an automatic gun had really been the murder weapon, there would
have been no need for the gunman to physically open the gun and dump
the empty cartridges out of it."
There wasn't as those shells eject automatically and they were found
near the body. They would be initaled by Poe and Barnes, but not be
available later when the WC showed them the shells.
"Furthermore, if an automatic had been used to kill Tippit, any
expended bullet shells would have been found much closer to Tippit's
police car, which was located many yards away from the Davis apartment
building."
They were found near the body and marked as evidence until the cover
story made them obsolete.
"Do CTers think that Tippit was killed by a person using an automatic,
and then the killer (or somebody) picked up the AUTOMATICALLY-EJECTED
CARTRIDGES and dumped them in the Davises' yard? (Weird theory
there.)]"
No, we think the shells the man dumped in the Davis' yard were meant
to frame LHO and they were from a .38 revolver. The automatic shells
from the bullets they used to kill JDT were found near the body. The
police are the ones that made TWO broadcasts concerning an automatic
weapon being involved in the killing, NOT CTers.
==============================
"Mr. BALL. What did you do next?
Mrs. DAVIS. He looked at her [Markham] first and looked at me and then
smiled and went around the corner.
Mr. BALL. Was he running or walking?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was walking at his normal pace.
Mr. BALL. And he went around the corner? Did he go on the sidewalk?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. He was on the sidewalk right beside the house.
Mr. BALL. Did he cut across your lawn at all?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Where?
Mrs. DAVIS. He cut across the middle of the yard."
Of course Dave wants to jump ahead to the lineup as there is some
interesting dialogue that makes one wonder how much she actually saw
in the first place.
Mrs. DAVIS. He was just parallel to the side of this and right around
this little bush and around the corner.
Mr. BALL. Around the corner?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. The black mark from the sidewalk on 534 marks the course
that the man took?
Representative FORD. Could you tell us where you were standing when
you saw him?
Mrs. DAVIS. I was standing on the porch.
Mr. BALL. Put an "X" there.
Mrs. DAVIS. I can't see the porch. The door is right between these two
things here.
Mr. BALL. These two things--what do you mean?
Mrs. DAVIS. Between the two posts.
Mr. BALL. Two posts?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Let's get a better view.
Mr. DULLES. It seems to be the best.
Mr. BALL. You are right.
That is 525.
Now mark where he cut across on that with a line.
Mrs. DAVIS. Right across like this, only it would be on the other side
of the bushes here.
Mr. BALL. Yes.
And where were you?
Mrs. DAVIS. Standing right--here is the door right here.
Two posts, a door and bushes are in her way, how good of a look did
she get with all this obstruction? We get an idea from this:
Mr. BALL. Put an "X" there. That "X" is a mark to locate your position
and we will give a symbol to it. "D." Now, the line you have drawn
from the sidewalk through the bushes is the course the man took. Where
was he when you saw him emptying his gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was right here on the other side of this bush.
Mr. BALL. Draw a line through the course there.
Mrs. DAVIS. Just about along in here.
Mr. DULLES. **Did you know at the time he was emptying his gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. That is what I presumed because he had it open and was
shaking it."
So we have a presumption of him emptying his gun, but she did NOT see
him actually throw anything away. Hmm. Now watch how the WC ignores
her statement and then makes it a firm fact in their next questions.
Mr. DULLES. I see. Just right there.
Mr. BALL. In other words, there is a cross you make across the line
that he took which marks the place **where he was emptying the gun.**
Mrs. DAVIS. Just about halfway there.
Mr. BALL. Mark it also on 21, 534.
Mrs. DAVIS. Not quite half, not quite to the bushes there.
Tricky work, huh? Now she saw nothing coming out of the gun yet one of
the shells was found away from the bushes on the cement path, this is
the one Virginia would find, and one is near the side of the house,
how does this happen?
Mr. BALL. Did you later look in the bushes and find something?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes; in the grass beside the house.
Mr. BALL. The grass beside the house. What did you find?
Mrs. DAVIS. We found one shell.
Mr. BALL. One shell?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. And your sister-in-law, did your sister-in-law find
something else?
Mrs. DAVIS. She found one later in the afternoon.
Mr. BALL. One, later?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Can you show me on one of these pictures here where you
found one shell?
Mrs. DAVIS. Under the window here. That would be the only one I could
tell.
Mr. BALL. ... Did you see your sister-in- law find the other shell?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Where was that found?
Mrs. DAVIS. There is a little cement walk right here by her door, it
was right there, not too far from there.
Amazing work.
==============================
"Mr. BALL. Were you shown a group of people in the police station and
asked if you could identify the man?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. ...."
I like how Dave skips this part:
Mr. BALL. Were you alone in that room when you were shown these
people?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Who was with you?
Mrs. DAVIS. My husband, my sister-in-law was with me, and some other
men.
Mr. BALL. That is your husband Troy, your sister-in-law Virginia
Davis, and yourself, and other men?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. Did you know those men?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Were police officers there?
Mrs. DAVIS. They were all in suits, some sat at the back of the room.
Who were the men in suits? Did these unknown men make the women feel
pressured, or tell them to pick a certain number?
Mrs. DAVIS. Four.
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. After when?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir."
Sounds convincing huh? Let's not forget the facts that she had been
laying down:
Mr. DULLES. Have you any way of fixing the time of when the man ran
across your lawn, approximately?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir; not exactly because I had laid down with the
children and I didn't pay any attention to what time it was.
So she may have been groggy when she was suddenly woken up by shots.
She had two posts and bushes in her line of sight as well. The shells
were found hours later away from where she saw him shaking he gun
(remember - she NEVER said she saw anything coming out of the gun).
Representative FORD. You saw him take the shells out of the gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir; he was shaking them.
Representative FORD. He was shaking them?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was shaking them. I didn't see him actually use his
hand to take them out. I mean he was sort of shaking them out.
Representative FORD. **Did you find this one bullet at the point where
you saw him shake the gun?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir; it was around the side of the house.**
Representative FORD. About how many feet?
Mrs. DAVIS. I don't know. Not too far.
Representative FORD. But he had moved from the one point to where you
found the bullets?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
==============================
"Mr. BALL. Let's go back to that afternoon [November 22, 1963], and
you give your best memory of what the man looked like. Don't think of
what anybody has told you or what has happened in between. Try to
remember the vision you had of that man--the color of his hair, the
size of his build and so forth.
Mrs. DAVIS. You mean weight and like that?
Mr. BALL. He was white, wasn't he?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Light complexioned, or dark?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was more light complected than he would have been dark.
Mr. BALL. Color of his hair?
Mrs. DAVIS. It was either dark brown or black. It was just dark hair.
Mr. BALL. And the color of his clothes?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, I said he had on--he looked to me that he had on
dark trousers, and it looked like a light-colored shirt, with a dark
coat over it."
This clothing description does NOT match what LHO was wearing at all.
Dave doesn't show this part that covers it even more:
Mr. BALL. Was he dressed the same in the lineup as he was when you saw
him running across the lawn?
Mrs. DAVIS. All except he didn't have a black coat on when I saw him
in the lineup.
Mr. BALL. Did he have a coat on when you saw him?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. What color coat?
Mrs. DAVIS. A dark coat.
When did LHO have on dark trousers and a dark coat?
"Mr. BALL. About what age would you say the man was?
Mrs. DAVIS. I am not very good on that. I don't know. I would say he
was about 23, 24.
Mr. BALL. And what about his weight and height? .... You have to be
general, I know that.
Mr. DULLES. Just your best recollection. If you haven't any, just tell
us.
Mrs. DAVIS. I just don't know.
Mr. BALL. Was he fat or slender?
Mrs. DAVIS. He was slender built, and not very heavy.
Mr. BALL. Was he a tall man, or a real short man, or average?
Mrs. DAVIS. Oh, he wasn't especially tall. I would say he was about
medium height or a little taller. I mean he wasn't extra tall.
Mr. BALL. Now, did you have some difficulty in identifying this No. 2
man in the showup when you saw him?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, they made us look at him a long time before they let
us say anything.
Mr. BALL. What about you? I am not talking about what you told them.
What was your reaction when you saw this man?"
What is this? What does she mean by "they made us look at him a long
time before they let us say anything?" Does this seem to anyone else
they were telling them which one they wanted them to pick by this
action? It sure does to me.
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, I was pretty sure it was the same man I saw. When
they made him turn sideways, I was positive that was the one I seen.
"[DVP: The "Number 2" man in the police lineup was, of course, Lee
Harvey Oswald.]"
Yeah he was, but here is vital info Dave left out again as it pertains
to how she saw the man:
Mr. BALL. Now, did you recognize him from his face or from his clothes
when you saw him in the lineup?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, I looked at his clothes and then his face from the
side because I had seen him from a side view of him. I didn't see him
fullface.
Mr. BALL. Now answer the question. Did you recognize him from seeing
his face or from his clothes?
Mrs. DAVIS. From his face because that was all I was looking at.
She did NOT see him fullface, but she can remember him from the side?
Notice the nasty tone of Ball by demanding she answer the question
too. How does this ID jive with the facts? The clothing in NO way
matches what LHO was wearing, how would they have made this work at
trial? She saw him in profile around two posts and bushes after being
awoken sharply by shots, how good was here memory? I think her
evading the question initially tells us she was not sure, but the
helpful men in suits made it easy by having them stare at LHO for a
long time. Let's go back to the coat:
Mr. BALL. I have a jacket, I would like to show you, which is
Commission Exhibit No. 162. Does this look anything like the jacket
that the man had on that was going across your lawn?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. How is it different?
Mrs. DAVIS. Well, it was dark and to me it looked like it was maybe a
wool fabric, it looked sort of rough. Like more of a sporting jacket.
Mr. BALL. I show you a shirt which is Commission Exhibit No. 150. Was
that--does that shirt look anything like something he had on, that the
man had on who went across your lawn?
Mrs. DAVIS. I thought that the shirt he had on was lighter than that.
So she couldn't ID the coat or the shirt LHO was wearing at the time,
how come? You have major issues my demented internet pen-pal.
==============================
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mrs. DAVIS. No.
Mr. BALL. One shell?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes.
Mr. BALL. One, later?
Mrs. DAVIS. Yes, sir.
Yes they did find shells, but they were not near wear Barbara presumed
the man was "emptying" his revolver, how come? Shells being tied to a
gun mean nothing as they do NOT tell you when they were fired. Even
more useless are they when the bullets in the dead person do NOT match
the weapon in question which is what happened here.
"In addition to the Davises, one other witness (Domingo Benavides)
found two additional bullet shells near the front yard of the Davis
residence very shortly after the shooting. Those two shells were also
linked "to the exclusion of all other weapons" to Lee Oswald's Smith &
Wesson .38 revolver -- the same gun he tried to use on more policemen
within the theater." "
They wisely did NOT ask her to ID the shell she found as they were NOT
the same. Go here to see:
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0216b.htm
Look at the end of the first paragraph on the right-hand side.
"So that makes THREE different civilians who initially picked up
bullet shells near the corner of Tenth & Patton on November 22nd. And
all four of those shells matched Oswald's gun."
The shells Benavides gave to the police could NOT be ID'd later either
as they lacked the initials of Officers Poe and Barnes.
"Even if some conspiracists want to argue the "chain of possession" of
the two shells found by Benavides (as CTers often do argue, due to a
discrepancy regarding the marking of those shells by DPD Officer
J.M.Poe)....what possible argument can those same CTers use to combat
the rock-solid chain of custody with respect to the two shells
discovered by Barbara and Virginia Davis?"
Uh, the inability of the women to ID the shells they were shown by the
WC as being the ones they found? Is that good enough?
"As far as I know, no conspiracy theorists have ever claimed that BOTH
of the Davis shells are "tainted" in some fashion. And if those are
really shells that came out of Oswald's gun on 11/22/63, then Lee
Harvey Oswald is guilty of murdering J.D. Tippit beyond all doubt."
Well, you obviously have ignored CE-2011, page 414 then.
"And since the overwhelming evidence indicates that there was ONLY ONE
PERSON WITH A GUN shooting anybody on Tenth Street on November 22, and
since that ONE PERSON with a gun dumped bullet shells from the ONE AND
ONLY GUN that was used to commit the murder of Officer Tippit....it
stands to reason (when just a small amount of common sense is applied)
that ALL FOUR BULLET SHELLS that were found by the three different
witnesses on 10th Street ALL CAME OUT OF THE VERY SAME GUN."
Which person was this again? Who was wearing dark slacks, a light
shirt and a wool type dark coat again? Oh, that is right, the man who
took the cab and was NOT LHO is who.
"And since there's no dispute whatsoever about the two shells found by
the Davis girls--those shells positively came from Oswald's gun--this
has to mean, logically, that the other two shells found by Benavides
MUST have come out of the very same gun as well."
Again, you need to read CE-2011, page 414, as there is a problem since
neither woman could ID the shell they found as being the one the WC
presented as such.
"And since the ONLY PERSON WITH A GUN on 10th Street was positively
identified as Lee Harvey Oswald by many different witnesses after the
murder, including Barbara Davis and Virginia Davis (who both came
within just a few feet of Tippit's killer on November 22), there can't
be much doubt about the following conclusion:
Lee Harvey Oswald, by himself, killed Officer J.D. Tippit with Lee
Harvey Oswald's very own gun.]"
You would like to believe this I know, but the physical evidence
disputes this. The witnesses do not give clothing descriptions
anywhere close to what LHO wore. I like this exchange as well:
Mr. BALL. Mrs. Davis, before you went down to look at the man at the
police station at 8 o'clock that night, had you seen television
pictures of the man on television that he had been arrested?
Mrs. DAVIS. As far as I can remember I don't remember seeing it
because I was out in the yard all the time that was going on, and I
don't believe the TV was on.
Mr. BALL. Before you saw the man in the lineup were you shown a
picture of any man by a police officer?
Mrs. DAVIS. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Did you read a newspaper and see any pictures in a
newspaper, picture of a man in the newspaper, before you went down
there?
Mrs. DAVIS. I don't really know. I couldn't be quite sure. I can't
remember whether I did or not.
Mr. BALL. Do you take an evening or a morning paper?
Mrs. DAVIS. We take an afternoon paper, we took an afternoon paper
then.
Mr. BALL. Do you recall whether or not you did see a picture in the
paper of the man?
Mrs. DAVIS. I don't remember. I don't even remember whether I read it
or not. There was so much excitement.
By her saying she can't remember whether she saw a picture of LHO or
not tells me she did, because if she didn't she would have said this
in all probability.
Neil Coburn
Neil