2 – Conduct after the Shooting
Those who believe Oswald was the shooter point to his ‘guilty’ behavior in the aftermath of the shooting. The Warren Commission analyzed his movements in the period between the assassination of the President and the shooting of Tippit some 40-45 minutes later. A total of seven witnesses claims to have seen Oswald during this period.
One of the Depository’s superintendents (Roy Truly) and a patrolman said they both saw Oswald less than two minutes after the shooting on the second floor. Another employee saw him under a minute later as he walked through the second-floor offices. At 12:40 p.m., he boarded a bus; an action witnessed by the bus driver and his former landlady.
Just four minutes later, he got off the bus and walked a few blocks to a cab stand. He hailed a cab, and the driver took him to a place in Oak Cliff that was around four blocks from his home. The housekeeper at Oswald’s rooming house said she saw him enter at around 1 pm and he left a few minutes later. Meanwhile, the Depository had been sealed off quickly. One of the men tasked with guarding the doors said he took his position around 3 minutes after the shooting. The Commission determined that it was possible for Oswald to flee the building from his sniper’s nest in that timeframe.
The Warren Report further states that Oswald shot Patrolman Tippit at 1.16 pm. This conclusion was based on witness testimony by Domingo Benavides who said that after a brief talk, Oswald pulled out a revolver and shot Tippit. Helen Markham is another witness; she identified Oswald from a police line-up but only after seeing his photo on television. Another witness, Warren Reynolds, said he saw a man running away from the murder but initially said it was not Oswald. He later changed his mind.
A witness by the name of Acquilla Clemens said there were two men involved in the murder of Tippit. The Patrolman was shot four times, and instead of immediately fleeing the scene, the killer evidently stopped and manually ejected four cartridge cases; an unusual thing to do since it was evidence that could be used against him. The cases were traced to Oswald’s revolver but a match with the bullets was never found.
If Oswald was innocent, why did he flee the Depository so quickly? It seems likely that he ran away from the scene as fast as possible; the act of a guilty man surely? Several witnesses saw him at different points in the aftermath of the shooting, they were not all mistaken, were they? There appears to be doubt over whether he shot Tippit. As you’ll see with the assassination attempt on General Walker, it fits neatly into the narrative that Oswald was a crazed killer.
If Oswald were a lone gunman, he would have fired three shots in approximately six seconds from his position in the Depository. This was eminently possible according to the Warren Commission. He left the TSBD within three minutes of the assassination, fled to his rented room and got the pistol he was found with when he was arrested at 1:50 p.m., some 80 minutes after the shooting. There was a roll-call taken after the assassination, and he was the only employee to leave the location; surely he did this because he was guilty?
President Kennedy was not the only person to allegedly die at Oswald’s hand that day. He shot and killed a police officer named J.D. Tippit around 40-45 minutes after the shooting of Kennedy. The bullets used to kill the policeman came from the same gun found on Oswald when he was arrested. The incident took place less than a mile away from his rental room.