The question thus arises about whether the West Davis accident call of 1:07pm was part of that set up. First as a signal to Mentzel that things were ready, and second as a pretext for Mentzel to separate from Tippit.
Per the tape, Mentzel labors the call. He in fact determines an accident officer is on the way, accident Officer Nolan, call sign 222. There was no need for Mentzel to go. The DPD had four specialist squads which dealt with motor accidents and there were 32 such officers on duty that day (CE5002), C.T. Walker included, call sign 223.
Indeed, Officer Summers, call sign 221, responded to a traffic call at 600 W Jefferson 25 seconds before Mentzel called clear at 1:03pm from the 400 block of W Jefferson. Mentzel didn’t go to that call then. Similarly, Summers didn’t get called for the 800 block of West Davis, despite 600 West Jefferson being closer to 800 West Davis than Mentzel – whose job it wasn’t anyway.
Speculative question: did Mentzel know all of what was going to happen next to Tippit? Another such question: Was Mentzel duped into tricking Tippit? To consider that requires looking at what Mentzel did as well as what he didn’t do after Tippit was shot.
A transcribed call was made to Mentzel by dispatch immediately after Temple Bowley’s call of approximately 1:11pm. There is no answer. At approximately 1:16 pm Mentzel signals “91 clear”, and the dispatcher said “91, have a signal 19 [a shooting] involving a police officer at 400 East Tenth. Suspect last seen running west on Jefferson. No description at this time”. Mentzel replies “10-4”.
Mentzel was given information over the radio at 1:16 pm about the shooting incident as if he’d been incommunicado until he got to Tyler, hence had missed all the calls of the prior 5 minutes - those calls making it clear it was Car 10, Tippit.
But Mentzel doesn’t do what someone incommunicado might do. He didn’t ask who the officer was, nor did he reveal anything of his or Tippit’s movements in vicinity of E 10th the minutes before Tippit was shot. He also said to the HSCA that he didn’t know the victim was Tippit until he arrived at E 10th: Which suggests a distinct lack of curiosity. Not least given that he told the HSCA he didn’t know Tippit was even in district 91 when shot. The first question should be “Who was it and what were they doing there?”
As well as that, why would attending a traffic accident that he said was a “minor fender bender” be a reason to stop hunting for Oswald?l Mentzel’s HSCA account of the accident being a ‘minor fender bender’ reads like a trivial brush off, just like any excuse that has seen better days.
This all leads to another speculative question: Did Mentzel not ask who the victim was because he already knew?
Shortly after that the dispatcher calls Mentzel to tell him:-
DIS: 91.
Mentzel 91: 91.
DIS: Suspect just passed 401 East Jefferson.
Mentzel 91: 10-4.
Unknown: Where did he just pass?
DIS: 401 East Jefferson.
Approximately 3 minutes after that (1:22pm) Mentzel calls:
Mentzel 91: 91.
DIS: 91.
Mentzel 91: What was the description besides the white jacket?
DIS: White male, thirty, five feet eight, black hair, slender build, white shirt, black trousers. Going west on Jefferson from the 300 block.
[Note. Oswald did not have black hair, but Larry Crafard did.]
The statement in Warren Commission Exhibit 2645 is ambiguous as to whether Mentzel heard the 1:11pm Bowley call, or the call to Mentzel at 1:16pm.
Mentzel says he went to the Beckley and Jefferson intersection, but nowhere on the tape is Mentzel told to go to the Beckley and Jefferson intersection. In fact, no one is dispatched there, and by the tape Mentzel isn’t dispatched anywhere.
Non-assigned traffic accident officer Charles T Walker was also in Oak Cliff on E 10th Street, 2-3 short blocks from where Tippit was shot. None of his radio calls prior to the murder of Tippit are transcribed either. His immediate reaction to the news of the downtown shooting of Kennedy was to go to a fire station to watch what was unfolding on TV (WC Vol VII page 34). He said he then went downtown, and then headed back to Oak Cliff when he heard of the shooting of Tippit.
By the time Walker had arrived at the Tippit murder scene witnesses had said that the assailant had run south down Patton and headed west along Jefferson. But Walker put out the radio call saying the assailant was in the public library several blocks to the east along Jefferson. The posse of officers was thence sent in the wrong direction.
A relevant point of geography is that the intersection of Jefferson and Beckley, is 70 yards from the alley that runs parallel and between Jefferson and 10th. From behind, 410 E 10th (it is the alley continuation of Lansing Street), it crosses Patton, Crawford, Storey and then Cumberland to reach Beckley. It then crosses Beckley and Zang and runs to behind the Texas Theater.
That alley was the last place any suspect was seen, by Mrs Brock, at the Bellew Texaco Garage at E Jefferson and Crawford. She said she saw him walking quickly across the parking lot (FBI Report of 22 January 1964). That would have been approximately 1:10 pm.
II
The Warren Commission Testimony of Warren Reynolds of 22 June 1964 (WC Vol 11, page 434) is consistent with that: -
Mr. REYNOLDS. I looked through the parking lot for him after. See, when he went behind the service station, I was right across the street, and when he ducked behind, I ran across the street and asked this man which way he went, and they told me the man had gone to the back. And I ran back there and looked up and down the alley right then and didn’t see him, and I looked under the cars, and I assumed that he was still hiding there.
Mr. LIEBELER. In the parking lot?
Mr. REYNOLDS. Even to this day I assume that he was.
Mr. LIEBELER. Where was this parking lot located now?
Mr. REYNOLDS. Corner of Crawford
Mr. LIEBELER. It would be at the back of the Texaco station, that is on Jefferson where they found his coat. They found his coat in the parking lot?
Mr. REYNOLDS. They found his coat there.
Mr. LIEBELER. So that he had apparently gone through the parking lot?
Mr. REYNOLDS. Oh, yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. And gone down the alley or something back to Jefferson Street?
Mr. REYNOLDS. Yes. When the police got there, and they were all there, I was trying to assure them that he was still there close. This was all a bunch of confusion. They didn’t know what was going on. And they got word that he was down at a library which was about 3 blocks down the street on the opposite side of the street.
Mr. LIEBELER. Down Jefferson?
Mr. REYNOLDS. Down Jefferson. And every one of them left to go there.
If that isn’t evidence of the police not trying to find someone, then what is? The reality appears that some officers did know what was going on. Enough to confuse the rest. The ringleader of the confusion was likely CT Walker.
From when the assailant was seen at the Texaco garage there was no sighting of the assailant until the incident at Hardy’s Shoe Shop, at about 1:40 pm on the basis of someone “looking funny”. This triggered the calling of the police for the arrest of Oswald on the premise that the person had run into the Texas Theater, opposite Hardy’s.
But for that journey there were no witnesses on the way, not even crossing the six-lane road at Zang nor the four-lane road at Beckley. Police meanwhile were sent to the wrong places, by Walker, they east, and then Westbrook sent people north of the crime scene.
Mentzel was local to the Oak Cliff district. From 10th at Beckley to the alley behind the garage at Jefferson and Crawford is 380 yards. Mentzel would have a shorter distance to travel than Tippit and he had the advantage of speed. It may even have been Mentzel that suggested that Car 207 went into the same alley behind 410 E 10th.
III
A white Eisenhower jacket was found in the parking lot at Bellew. Mary Brock hadn’t mentioned anyone taking it off there when the assailant passed her. Why would someone on the run holding a gun restrict their movement by taking a jacket off whilst holding a gun when someone is looking at them and they are about to do a disappearing trick? Jackets can be difficult to take off in normal times, even more if holding a gun.
As Oswald in the Texas Theater wasn’t wearing such a jacket, that disposal was ill thought through, and it was never clear which officer had found it. The found jacket was announced by Officer Griffin over the radio at approximately 1:21 pm as being a white one. It is highly unlikely that this jacket was really Oswald’s. It had two laundry tags. The FBI, checked 424 laundries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and 293 laundries in the New Orleans area. They were unable to match either the tag or the laundry mark to any them. (See WC Documents, 993 and 1245) The Bureau’s examination of Oswald’s clothing showed not a single laundry or dry cleaning mark or tag. And although the jacket was size medium, all of Oswald’s other clothing was size small. As author Henry Hurt noted, the Warren Report does not entail any references to this extensive effort to trace the laundry marking. By doing so the Warren Commission could say the jacket belonged to Oswald, when that was very unlikely. (Hurt, Reasonable Doubt.)
There is a catalogue of events which fit with improvised framing of Oswald for Tippit’s impromptu murder alongside the intended framing of Oswald for Kennedy’s murder.
The gun used to kill Tippit was announced over the DPD radio as an automatic. The Oswald revolver wasn’t. (Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, p. 273) The cartridges thrown at the scene were marked as standard practice with initials by Officer Poe. Those marks then disappeared after the evidence chain was broken by taking gun related evidence to Captain Westbrook’s office. (Hurt, pp. 153-54)
Archived TV footage discovered in 2013 (the ‘Reiland film’) shows police officers examining a wallet at the scene outside 410 E10th before the arrest of Oswald. That wallet was then never mentioned again as an official find at that scene. (McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 466-67) Instead, a wallet was supposedly - for evidence purposes - taken from Oswald.
That is consistent with the ill thought through planting of the wallet, which by virtue of the address it had in it, triggered police to arrive at 1026 N Beckley just after 1:30pm. And according to the landlord Gladys Johnson, the FBI was there also. (Sara Peterson and K. W. Zachary, The Lone Star Speaks.) That time ran against the official line that 1026 N Beckley addressed wasn’t known about until DPD Officers and County Sheriffs arrived at Oswald’s family home in Irving, and that wasn’t until after 3:30pm. But two wallets would have made it transparently obvious Oswald was being framed.
In all there was a break in the chain of custody of: cartridges, the gun supposedly taken from Oswald, the jacket and the wallet that was found and then unfound.
IV
Things continued to be irregular after that. Let us contrast Mentzel’s lack of inquisitiveness to that of Sergeant Owens.
Owens is probably the least discreet officer on the tape, meaning he asks rational questions. He said at around 1:30 pm of Tippit.
Owens 19. Do you know what kind of call he was on?
DIS: What kind of what?
Owens 19: Was he on a call or anything?
DIS: No.
Owens 19: 10-4.
The dispatcher saying “No”, is yet more evidence the instructions to Tippit and Nelson at 12:45pm call was a fake. But again, Mentzel hasn’t answered to reveal that he and Tippit were working together.
Some minutes after that Owens then said this:
Owens 19: Is Sgt H Davis 80 in service?
DIS: Sgt H Davis 80.
Owens 19: I think he was sent down to Elm and Central. We need somebody to notify that officer's wife.
DIS: Sgt H Davis 80.
Davis doesn’t respond. But Owen’s linking Davis as the person who should tell Mrs. Tippit suggests Davis was the Sergeant commanding Tippit.
This is Owen in an FBI memo of 20 May 1964, supplied to the Warren Commission on 5 June 1964, but never published by the Commission.
According to Sergeant OWENS, Officer TIPPIT had gone home to eat lunch, which was a normal and approved procedure, at about noontime.
Sergeant OWENS advised he could not furnish any information as to when or how TIPPIT's assignment from District 78 had been changed as he, OWENS, had gone to lunch and had not returned during the time that TIPPIT's assignment had been changed.
Mr. Ely. Were you on duty on November 22, 1983?
Mr. Owens. I was.
Mr. Ely. And what was the nature of your assignment on that date?
Mr. Owens. Acting lieutenant, Oak Cliff substation.
Mr. Ely. Because you were acting lieutenant in the Oak Cliff substation, would that mean that Officer Tippit would be under your supervision?
Mr. Owens. That's true.
Mr. Ely. Off the record. (Discussion off the record between Counsel Ely and the witness Owens.)
Mr. Owens. I don't know what district Officer J. L. Angel [sic:Angell] was working, but it was my understanding that he also went to Elm and Houston.
Mr. Ely. Well, he was working somewhere in the Oak Cliff area, was he?
Mr. Owens. Yes; he was working in the Oak Cliff area under the same sergeant that Officer Tippit was working under
So, by that, Tippit, Angell and Mentzel were working under the same district Officer, and Davis was a southwest supervising officer, who then reported to Owens, who was in overall charge by the official hierarchy until he was replaced by Davis.
Bearing in mind that a bullet had been removed from Tippit’s body by 1:30 pm and an autopsy request signed, it’s remarkable that there needed to be any discussion about telling Mrs. Tippit after that. This after all was a police force that had been able to send officers to minor traffic accidents minutes after a president had been shot.
There was clearly sensitivity. A conversation listed in the first transcript - CD-290 - disappeared in the next two versions CE-705 and CE-1974.
531 [Despatch] ” “210 was dispatched to notify Mrs Tippit”,
CD-290 puts this sometime before 1:40pm. It’s missing from CE-705 and the earliest mention in CE-705 to that matter is a call between 1:40 pm and 1:43pm and that transmission used the word ‘wife’ not ‘Mrs. Tippit’. The tape transcripts show that even after 2:00 pm Mrs Tippit still hadn’t been told even though it’s appearing on TV.
At 1:53 pm there was this exchange.
DIS: We had a shooting of a police officer which was DOA at Methodist. The suspect has been apprehended at Texas Theater and en route to the station.
3 (Deputy Chief Stevenson): 10-4. Thank you.
Mentzel 91: Mentzel 91 clear.
DIS: Mentzel 91. 1:53.
At 1:54pm there is this exchange:
Gerry Hill (550/2): 550/2
DIS: Gerry Hill (550/2). 550/2 (CT Walker) 223 is in the car with us. See if someone can pick up his car at the rear of the Texas Theater and take it to the station. It's got the keys in it.
DIS: 10-4.
DIS: Mentzel 91. 91
Mentzel 91: 91.
DIS: Report back to the Texas Theater. Get CT Walker car and lock it up.
Mentzel 91: 10-4.
And a minute later:
Mentzel 91: 91.
DIS: 91.
Mentzel 91: What do you want me to do with the keys after I lock that car up?
DIS: Just keep them until you can contact CT Walker.
Mentzel 91: 10-4.
Mentzel was also told to “report back” to the Texas Theater, and his Warren Commission account via the FBI was that he had gone there, “then [Mentzel] was dispatched to the Texas Theatre, where the suspect was reportedly hiding” and the tape supports that. Mentzel’s HSCA account was that he didn’t go there.
Added to that, Mentzel at the time felt it was more important to worry about CT Walker’s car than telling Mrs Tippit. As McBride notes in his milestone book in one version of Marie Tippit’s story, her husband left very quickly after lunch because so many officers were downtown due to the motorcade. As McBride then notes, this could imply ”that TIppit already might have suspected, before any trouble occurred downtown, that he would be needed to fill in for other officers vacating Oak Cliff” and that could suggest some knowledge in advance about Oswald. (McBride, p. 510) After all, based on the testimony of Edgar Lee TIppit, the officer’s father, Mentzel and he were looking for Oswald, and Mentzel told the widow that. (McBride, p. 427)
Recall, although Mentzel was patrolling two districts in Oak Cliff, the dispatcher did not call him to be at large for any emergency that might come in—as were Nelson and TIppit. (ibid, p. 428) Was he at Luby’s when he learned of the assassination, or was that a “cover story for other unacknowledged activities.” (ibid, p. 429). As McBride writes,
The confusion in this HSCA interview report nearly fourteen years after the events occurred, perhaps is an attempt to rationalize Mentzel’s erratic, somewhat mysterious whereabouts in the 8 minutes between the accident call and the officer’s belated report to the police dispatcher that he was “clear”. (ibid)
V
Mentzel’s misrepresentations are consistent with other discrepancies in Warren Commission testimonies, in particular those of Captain Westbrook, Reserve Sergeant Croy and Sergeant Jerry Hill. Time is easier to lie about than location.
The Russian intelligence network concluded that they’d put the assassination down to a right-wing plot assisted by rogue elements of the Dallas Police Force. If so there would need to be covert movements of police officers and other devices to assist in it. This article doesn’t suggest that any DPD Officers were directly involved in shooting the President, pulling triggers. Quite the opposite.
What does need to be considered is whether assistance was given to 1) ensure safe getaway of professional assassins, 2) move Oswald as the fall-guy operating under a duped pretext by car to the Texas Theatre where he would be shot.
It is car 207 that was seen in the rear driveway of 410 E10th at the time Tippit was shot. It was not a random location as Virginia Davis said he was there so often she thought he lived there.
Mentzel’s calls and self-account before Tippit are highly suggestive for that scenario. The accident call could be genuine. But against that is the fact that none of it was transcribed for any of the three transcripts. No accident would account for Mentzel abandoning “hunting down Oswald”, a fender-bender is hardly a priority in the face of that.
A rational answer would be “I have something else on”
The circumstances regarding what and when the Tippit family was told things also stick out like a sore thumb.
The fact that the Warren Commission would never answer the questions about Oswald and Tippit straightforwardly is obvious. The Warren Commission work outline was largely based on the Nicholas Katzenbach memo to Bill Moyers, an assistant to President Johnson, written just two hours after zenOswald had been killed.
President Johnson and FBI Director Hoover followed Katzenbach’s memo to a tee, disregarding any other leads that led to a conspiracy.
Deputy US Attorney Nicholas Katzenbach’s memo:
It is important that all of the facts surrounding President Kennedy’s Assassination be made public in a way which will satisfy people in the United States and abroad that all the facts have been told and that a statement to this effect be made now.
The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.
Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right–wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat — too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced.
The matter has been handled thus far with neither dignity nor conviction. Facts have been mixed with rumour and speculation. We can scarcely let the world see us totally in the image of the Dallas police when our President is murdered.
I think this objective may be satisfied by making public as soon as possible a complete and thorough FBI report on Oswald and the assassination. This may run into the difficulty of pointing to inconsistencies between this report and statements by Dallas police officials. But the reputation of the Bureau is such that it may do the whole job.
The only other step would be the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions. This has both advantages and disadvantages. It [sic] think it can await publication of the FBI report and public reaction to it here and abroad.
I think, however, that a statement that all the facts will be made public property in an orderly and responsible way should be made now. We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort.
Read Part One
