At approximately 1:15 p.m., Tippit, who was cruising east on 10th Street, passed the intersection of 10th and Patton, about eight blocks from where he had reported at 12:54 p.m. About 100 feet past the intersection Tippit stopped a man walking east along the south side of Patton. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1968, [p. 164].) The man’s general description was similar to the one broadcast over the police radio. Tippit stopped the man and called him to his car. He approached the car and apparently exchanged words with Tippit through the right front or vent window. Tippit got out and started to walk around the front of the car. As Tippit reached the left front wheel the man pulled out a revolver and fired several shots. Four bullets hit Tippit and killed him instantly. The gunman started back toward Patton Avenue, ejecting the empty cartridge cases before reloading with fresh bullets.
Eyewitnesses
At least 12 persons saw the man with the revolver in the vicinity of the Tippit crime scene at or immediately after the shooting. By the evening of November 22, five of them had identified Lee Harvey Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. A sixth did so the next day. Three others subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. Two witnesses testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. One witness felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1968, [p. 164].)
A taxi driver, William Scoggins, was eating lunch in his cab which was parked on Patton facing the southeast corner of 10th Street and Patton Avenue a few feet to the north.[C4-503] A police car moving east on 10th at about 10 or 12 miles an hour passed in front of his cab. About 100 feet from the corner the police car pulled up alongside a man on the sidewalk. This man, dressed in a light-colored jacket, approached the car. Scoggins lost sight of him behind some shrubbery on the southeast corner lot, but he saw the policeman leave the car, heard three or four shots, and then saw the policeman fall. Scoggins hurriedly left his seat and hid behind the cab as the man came back toward the corner with gun in hand. The man cut across the yard through some bushes, passed within 12 feet of Scoggins, and ran south on Patton. Scoggins saw him and heard him mutter either “Poor damn cop” or “Poor dumb cop.”[C4-504] The next day Scoggins viewed a lineup of four persons and identified Oswald as the man whom he had seen the day before at 10th and Patton.[C4-505] In his testimony before the Commission, Scoggins stated that he thought he had seen a picture of Oswald in the newspapers prior to the lineup identification on Saturday. He had not seen Oswald on television and had not been shown any photographs of Oswald by the police.[C4-506]
Another witness, Domingo Benavides, was driving a pickup truck west on 10th Street. As he crossed the intersection a block east of 10th and Patton, he saw a policeman standing by the left door of the police car parked along the south side of 10th. Benavides saw a man standing at the right side of the parked police car. He then heard three shots and saw the policeman fall to the ground. By this time the pickup truck was across the street and about 25 feet from the police car. Benavides stopped and waited in the truck until the gunman ran to the corner. He saw him empty the gun and throw the shells into some bushes on the southeast corner lot.[C4-507] It was Benavides, using Tippit’s car radio, who first reported the killing of Patrolman Tippit at about 1:16 p.m.: “We’ve had a shooting out here.”[C4-508] He found two empty shells in the bushes and gave them to Patrolman J. M. Poe who arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting.[C4-509] Benavides never saw Oswald after the arrest. When questioned by police officers on the evening of November 22, Benavides told them that he did not think that he could identify the man who fired the shots. As a result, they did not take him to the police station. He testified that the picture of Oswald which he saw later on television bore a resemblance to the man who shot Officer Tippit.[C4-510]
Just prior to the shooting, Mrs. Helen Markham, a waitress in downtown Dallas, was about to cross 10th Street at Patton. As she waited on the northwest corner of the intersection for traffic to pass,[C4-511] she noticed a young man as he was “almost ready to get up on the curb”[C4-512] at the southeast corner of the intersection, approximately 50 feet away. The man continued along 10th Street. Mrs. Markham saw a police car slowly approach the man from the rear and stop alongside of him. She saw the man come to the right window of the police car. As he talked, he leaned on the ledge of the right window with his arms. The man appeared to step back as the policeman “calmly opened the car door” and very slowly got out and walked toward the front of the car. The man pulled a gun. Mrs. Markham heard three shots and saw the policeman fall to the ground near the left front wheel. She raised her hands to her eyes as the man started to walk back toward Patton.[C4-513] She peered through her fingers, lowered her hands, and saw the man doing something with his gun. “He was just fooling with it. I didn’t know what he was doing. I was afraid he was fixing to kill me.”[C4-514] The man “in kind of a little trot” headed down Patton toward Jefferson Boulevard, a block away. Mrs. Markham then ran to Officer Tippit’s side and saw him lying in a pool of blood.[C4-515]
Helen Markham was screaming as she leaned over the body.[C4-516] A few minutes later she described the gunman to a policeman.[C4-517] Her description and that of other eyewitnesses led to the police broadcast at 1:22 p.m. describing the slayer as “about 30, 5’8”, black hair, slender.”[C4-518] At about 4:30 p.m., Mrs. Markham, who had been greatly upset by her experience, was able to view a lineup of four men handcuffed together at the police station.[C4-519] She identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man who shot the policeman.[C4-520] Detective L. C. Graves, who had been with Mrs. Markham before the lineup testified that she was “quite hysterical” and was “crying and upset.”[C4-521] He said that Mrs. Markham started crying when Oswald walked into the lineup room.[C4-522] In testimony before the Commission, Mrs. Markham confirmed her positive identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man she saw kill Officer Tippit.[C4-523]
In evaluating Mrs. Markham’s identification of Oswald, the Commission considered certain allegations that Mrs. Markham described the man who killed Patrolman Tippit as “short, a little on the heavy side,” and having “somewhat bushy” hair.[C4-524] The Commission reviewed the transcript of a phone conversation in which Mrs. Markham is alleged to have provided such a description.[C4-525] A review of the complete transcript has satisfied the Commission that Mrs. Markham strongly reaffirmed her positive identification of Oswald and denied having described the killer as short, stocky and having bushy hair. She stated that the man weighed about 150 pounds.[C4-526] Although she used the words “a little bit bushy” to describe the gunman’s hair, the transcript establishes that she was referring to the uncombed state of his hair, a description fully supported by a photograph of Oswald taken at the time of his arrest. (See Pizzo Exhibit No. 453-C, [p. 177].) Although in the phone conversation she described the man as “short,”[C4-527] on November 22, within minutes of the shooting and before the lineup, Mrs. Markham described the man to the police as 5’8” tall.[C4-528]
During her testimony Mrs. Markham initially denied that she ever had the above phone conversation.[C4-529] She has subsequently admitted the existence of the conversation and offered an explanation for her denial.[C4-530] Addressing itself solely to the probative value of Mrs. Markham’s contemporaneous description of the gunman and her positive identification of Oswald at a police lineup, the Commission considers her testimony reliable. However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham’s testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit.
Two young women, Barbara Jeanette Davis and Virginia Davis, were in an apartment of a multiple-unit house on the southeast corner of 10th and Patton when they heard the sound of gunfire and the screams of Helen Markham. They ran to the door in time to see a man with a revolver cut across their lawn and disappear around a corner of the house onto Patton.[C4-531] Barbara Jeanette Davis assumed that he was emptying his gun as “he had it open and was shaking it.”[C4-532] She immediately called the police. Later in the day each woman found an empty shell on the ground near the house. These two shells were delivered to the police.[C4-533]