simulated recreation of the positions of Oswald and officer Tippit at the time of his
shooting.
Revolver.|189x189px On November 22, 1963, Tippit was working beat number 78, his normal patrol area in south
Oak Cliff, a residential area of Dallas. At 12:45 p.m., 15 minutes after
President Kennedy was shot in Dealey Plaza, Tippit received a radio order to drive to the central Oak Cliff area as part of a concentration of police around the center of the city. At 12:54, Tippit radioed that he had moved as directed. By then, several messages had been broadcast describing a suspect in the shooting as a slender white male, in his early 30s, tall, and weighing about . Oswald was a slender white male, 24 years old, tall, and an estimated weight of at autopsy. Tippit spoke his last known words, "10-4", over his police radio. The Warren Commission concluded that at approximately 1:11–1:14 p.m., Tippit was driving slowly eastward on East 10th Street—about past the intersection of 10th Street and Patton Avenue—when he pulled alongside a man who resembled the police description. Oswald walked over to Tippit's car and exchanged words with him through an open vent window. Tippit opened his car door and began walking to the front of the car. Oswald then drew his handgun and fired four shots in rapid succession. Three bullets hit Tippit in the chest, and as he lay on the ground, another shot hit his right temple, killing him instantly. Tippit's body was transported from the scene of the shooting by ambulance to
Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:25 p.m. by Dr. Richard A. Liguori. Domingo Benavides saw Tippit standing by the left door of his parked police car, and a man standing on the right side of the car. He then heard three Callaway testified that he had seen the shooter with the gun "in a raised pistol position", and shouted at him, but what the shooter responded was unintelligible. Markham identified Oswald as Tippit's killer in a police lineup she viewed that evening. Barbara Davis and her sister-in-law Virginia Davis heard the shots and saw a man crossing their lawn, shaking his revolver, as if he were emptying it of cartridge cases. Later, the women found two cartridge cases near the crime scene and handed the cases over to police. Two other cartridge cases were handed to a policeman by Benavides. That evening, Barbara Davis and Virginia Davis were taken to a lineup and both Davises picked out Oswald as the man whom they had seen. Taxicab driver William Scoggins testified that he was sitting nearby in his cab when he saw Tippit's police car pull up alongside a man on the sidewalk. Scoggins heard three or four shots and then saw Tippit fall to the ground. As Scoggins crouched behind his cab, the man passed within 12 feet of him, pistol in hand, muttering what sounded to him like, "poor dumb cop" or "poor damn cop". The next day, Scoggins viewed a police lineup and identified Oswald as the man whom he had seen with the pistol. The Commission also named several other witnesses who were not at the scene of the murder, but who identified Oswald running between the murder scene and the
Texas Theatre, where Oswald was subsequently arrested. It was the unanimous testimony of expert witnesses before the Warren Commission that these spent cartridge cases were fired from the revolver in Oswald's possession to the exclusion of all other weapons. Out of the four bullets recovered from Tippit's body, only one (according to Nicol) or none (according to Cunningham) could be positively identified as having been fired from Oswald's revolver; the others "could have" been fired from that revolver, but there was no certain match. When the revolver was test-fired by the FBI, it was reported that it was leaving inconsistent microscopic markings on the bullets, i.e. two consecutive bullets fired from it could not be matched to each other. This was because the revolver had been rechambered for .38 Special but not rebarreled for .38 Special, so the bullets were slightly undersized compared to the barrel, making their passage through the barrel "erratic". Extensive damage to the bullets and mutilation was noted. Later, the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with Cunningham's conclusion that none of the bullets found could be positively identified, or ruled out, as having been fired from Oswald's revolver. Still, when they test-fired the gun, they found that bullets fired from it could actually be matched to each other, if they were of the same type and manufacturer. There was a discrepancy between the four cartridge cases (2 Western, 2 Remington-Peters) and the four bullets (3 Western-Winchester, 1 Remington-Peters) found; one of the proposed explanations was that Oswald fired five shots, and one bullet and one cartridge case were not found. Detective Gus Rose recalled differently, saying that Oswald denied owning a revolver and claimed the cops had planted the revolver on him when they arrested him in the theater. Based on eyewitness' statements and the gun, Oswald was formally charged with the murder of Tippit at 7:10 p.m. on November 22. During the course of the day, police began to suspect that Oswald was also involved in the shooting of Kennedy. At approximately 1:00 am on November 23, Oswald was also charged with assassinating Kennedy. Oswald continued to maintain his innocence in connection with both murders. On November 24, while being transported from the Dallas City Jail to the Dallas County Jail, Oswald was shot and mortally wounded by Dallas nightclub owner
Jack Ruby. The shooting was broadcast throughout the United States and Canada on
live television. As Oswald was killed before he was tried for either crime, President
Lyndon B. Johnson commissioned a committee of US Senators, Congressmen and elder statesmen to investigate the events surrounding the deaths of Kennedy, Tippit, and Oswald in an effort to answer questions regarding the events. Johnson also hoped to quell rumors that arose after Oswald was shot by Ruby that the assassination and subsequent shootings were part of a
conspiracy. The committee, known as the
Warren Commission, named for the commission chairman, Chief Justice
Earl Warren, spent ten months investigating the murders and interviewing witnesses. The report also concluded that Ruby acted alone in the killing of Oswald. In 1979, the HSCA reported: "Based on Oswald's possession of the murder weapon a short time after the murder and the eyewitness identifications of Oswald as the gunman, the committee concluded that Oswald shot and killed Tippit."
Conspiracy theories Some conspiracy theorists have alleged that the murder of Tippit was part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, implying that two murders could not have happened so closely together by coincidence. Warren Commission attorney
David Belin referred to Tippit's killing as the "
Rosetta Stone to the JFK assassination". Other conspiracy theorists suggest that Tippit's murder was unconnected to the assassination. Some conspiracy theorists dispute that Oswald shot Tippit, alleging that the physical evidence and witness testimony do not support that conclusion.
New Orleans district attorney
Jim Garrison, who investigated the
assassination of John F. Kennedy and brought evidence in
his 1969 trial of businessman
Clay Shaw, contended in his book
On the Trail of the Assassins that the witness testimony and handling of evidence in the Tippit murder was flawed and that it was doubtful that Oswald was the killer or even at the scene of the crime. According to Garrison, numerous witnesses who were not interviewed by the Warren Commission reported seeing two men fleeing the scene of Tippit's murder. Garrison claimed that Helen Markham, the Warren Commission's star witness, expressed uncertainty as to her identification of Oswald in the police lineup. Garrison claimed that bullets recovered from Tippit's body were from two different manufacturers, as the Warren Commission stated, and the gun found on Oswald at his arrest did not match the cartridges found at the scene. Garrison accused the Dallas Police Department of mishandling the evidence and of possibly firing Oswald's revolver to produce bullet cartridges for the FBI to link to his gun. Other conspiracy theorists allege that Tippit himself was a conspirator, tasked to kill Oswald by organized crime or right-wing politicians in order to cover up the search for other assassins, and that Oswald killed him in self-defense. ==Aftermath==