Further Details on the Tippit Murder

Our continuing search for leads in the J D Tippit murder has yielded a bumper crop of information which will help us better develop a theory of the crime. We can add one more murderer to our list and remove another.

We previously opined that Billy Lovelady may have been a murder suspect of Tippit’s. We reject that thesis on two grounds. The first is that he is not a trigger puller as far as we now know. He was a co-worker of Lee Oswald who was later Photoshopped in place of Oswald in the Altgens6 photo. Lovelady did go along with the murder after he was told what he must do, and was rewarded with his own trucking company in Denver, CO. Unfortunately one of the CIA’s silencers got to him to ensure that he didn’t accidentally spill the beans. He made his bargain with the Devil and lost.

 

We have put forward the name of Roscoe White, a known Oswald imposter, as the murderer, and still think that he is the most likely suspect. This theory received a boost when we came across the story from Into the Midnight of a witness T F White who saw a 1957 4 door Plymouth with a suspiciously acting man, so proceeded to get the license plate number.  White got a good look at the driver, whom he later identified as Oswald when he saw him on TV that evening. However, Oswald was in the theater and not Tippit’s murderer.

 

This means that Roscoe White is definitely one of Tippit’s killers.

 

The license plate was traced back to Carl Mather (b 10/22/1927), meaning that Mather may have loaned this vehicle to White. Mather was an employee of Collins Radio, a major defense contractor who supplied communications equipment to the military going back to World War 2.

 

But the story is even more interesting because Mather was a “good” friend of the Tippits whom J D had met in 1958. In fact the Mathers went to visit the widow Marie from around 3:30 – 5:00 PM to express their fake condolences.

 

We do not overlook the possibility that Mather was framed, or someone took his identity to deceive. However, during subsequent investigations of this story, only his wife Barbara was ever interviewed - a preposterous tact since the car was in Carl's name. The HSCA even refused to interview Mather under a grant of immunity.

We do know that Mather later worked on Air Force 2 installing radio equipment, and we do know that Johnson was a murderer of the president. At this point we are not certain how Mather relates to Tippit's murder, but he does in a very strange way.

 

Collins also supplied the communications and command post equipment for the Kennedy murder. This command post is shown as a trailer in a photo disseminated by Jim Fetzer which we believe is one of the Altgens photos. It is striking to see the trailer in the background which sticks out like a sore thumb and so incongruently. Clearly it was a command post.

 

The executives of Collins Radio were extremely angry with Kennedy for curtailing spending plans affecting them, many of which were slated for Vietnam.

 

So to date, we have identified 3 Tippit murderers:  Roscoe White, and at least 1 unidentified Dallas Police Department officer, and an accomplice with White. Gerald Hill, another DPD officer, is also likely part of the conspiracy to murder Tippit. And we add Carl Mather as a person of interest, if not suspect, his friendship with Tippit meaning very little to us.

 

The interesting aspect of this story is the possibility that Tippit was Badge Man seen in the famous Moorman photo which Jack White deciphered. We had rejected this thesis based upon analysis by Duke Lane who developed a plausible case that Tippit was nowhere near Dealey as his police transmission records document.

 

But there are a couple of holes in the theory. The first is that Michael T Griffith, an excellent Kennedy assassination researcher, reported that the police tape of Tippit had been dubbed to give his location as something other than it was. Thus, with evidence being tampered, the likelihood of Tippit’s location reports may be fabricated. And given the communications expertise provided by Collins Radio, it is quite possible the locations and communication with Tippit were faked.

 

The other hole is that an enlisted man at the time, Gordon Arnold, who was standing in front of the picket fence on the grassy knoll taking pictures, was assaulted by a man in police uniform after the ambush who was crying and demanding that Arnold give him his camera. The policeman held a weapon, kicked Arnold, and took the film.

 

The behavior of the gunman suggests that it may have been Tippit, although we are not dogmatic about the point – yet.

 

What we can conclude with confidence about the story is that gunfire came from the grassy knoll and someone dressed as a police officer fired the shot. We believe that it was indeed a Dallas Police officer. The great debate will rage whether the police records uphold Tippit being where they said he was, or if they were faked to show him where he wasn’t in order to hide his presence at the grassy knoll.

 

Given that so many people were involved in Tippit’s murder, and many of them DPD, the case for evidence alteration is powerful.

 

For this outing, we produced a more complete list of Tippit’s murders, with at least 2-3 more to go. We will also plan an essay explaining why he was murdered.

Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.