J. D. Tippit (September 18, 1924 – November 22, 1963) was an American World War II U.S. Army veteran and Bronze Star Medal recipient, who was a police officer with the Dallas Police Department from 1952 to 1963. On Friday November 22, 1963, less than an hour after the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, Tippit was shot and killed in a residential neighborhood in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was initially arrested for the murder of Tippit and was subsequently charged with killing Kennedy, but he was murdered by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, two days later, before he could be tried. In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Tippit was killed by Oswald acting alone, though Tippit's murder has spawned alternative scenarios from Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.
Early life J. D. Tippit was born near the town of Annona, Texas, in Red River County. He was the eldest of seven children to Edgar Lee Tippit (1902–2006) and Lizzie Mae "May Bug" Rush (1905–1990). The Tippit and Burns families were mostly of English ancestry, their ancestors having immigrated to Virginia from England by 1635. It is sometimes reported that J. D. stood for "Jefferson Davis", but the letters did not stand for anything.
Tippit attended public schools through the tenth grade and was raised as a Baptist, a faith he practiced for the rest of his life. In the fall of 1939, when he was 15 years old, his family moved to Baker Lane, a stretch of dirt road six miles southwest from Clarksville, Texas.
Military service He served in World War II, entering the United States Army on July 21, 1944. He volunteered for the paratroopers, part of the newly-formed airborne forces. After finishing his training, he was sent to Europe, in January 1945, and was assigned to the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment (513th PIR), part of the 17th Airborne Division, which had recently fought in the Battle of the Bulge and suffered heavy casualties. He saw combat in Operation Varsity, the airborne crossing of the Rhine River in March 1945, earning a Bronze Star Medal, and remained on active duty until June 20, 1946.
Career Tippit began working for the Dearborn Stove Company in 1946. He next worked for Sears, Roebuck and Company in the installation department from March 1948 to September 1949 when he was laid off. Tippit and his wife Marie moved to Lone Star, Texas, where Tippit attempted to farm and raise cattle.
In January 1950, Tippit enrolled in a Veterans Administration vocational training school at Bogata, Texas. He left the school in June 1952. After several setbacks as a farmer and rancher, Tippit decided to become a police officer. The Tippit family then relocated to Dallas where Tippit was hired by the Dallas Police Department as a patrolman in July 1952. During his time with the Dallas Police Department, Tippit was cited twice for bravery. On September 2, 1956, Tippit and partner Dale Hankins stopped an intoxicated man acting suspicious, that Tippit thought he had seen in a Colorado wanted poster. The man drew a semi-automatic pistol at Tippit's head and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire as he had forgotten to remove the safety. Tippit and Hankins shot the man dead.
At the time of his death, Tippit was earning a monthly salary of $490, , as a Dallas police officer. He was working two part-time jobs. He worked at Austin's Barbecue restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights and at the Stevens Park Theatre on Sundays.
Murder and investigation
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 was tall and weighed . Warren Commission Hearings Vol. XXVI, p. 521. Oswald walked over to Tippit's car and exchanged words with him through an open vent window.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 19, p. 113, Barnes Exhibit A, Right side of Tippit squad car, showing open wing vent window. Mrs. Markham was on the opposite side of the street and a half block back. 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.
A short time later, Hardy's shoe store manager Johnny Brewer observed Oswald acting suspiciously as police cars passed nearby with sirens blaring. Oswald then ducked into the Texas Theatre without purchasing a ticket. The police were notified by the theater's cashier and responded by surrounding the theater. Oswald was arrested after a brief struggle. Twelve people who witnessed the shooting or its aftermath were mentioned in the Warren Report.By the evening of November 22, five of them (Helen Markham, Barbara Davis, Virginia Davis, Ted Callaway, Sam Guinyard) had identified Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. A sixth (William Scoggins) did so the next day. Three others (Harold Russell, Pat Patterson, Warren Reynolds) subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. Two witnesses (Domingo Benavides, William Smith) testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. One witness (L.J. Lewis) felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification. Warren Commission Hearings, CE 1968, Location of Eyewitnesses to the Movements of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Vicinity of the Tippit Killing.
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 shots and saw Tippit fall to the ground. Benavides stopped his pickup truck on the opposite side of the street from Tippit's car. He observed the shooter fleeing the scene and removing two spent cartridge cases from his gun as he left.
Benavides waited in his truck until the gunman disappeared, and then "a few minutes" more, before assisting Tippit. He then tried, unsuccessfully, to use the radio in Tippit's car to report the shooting to police headquarters. Then another, unidentified person used the radio in the car and reported the shooting to a police operator for the first time. After that, Ted Callaway, who was Benavides' boss at the used car lot and a former Marine, used the radio and reported the shooting, hearing in response that the police already knew about it.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, Testimony of Domingo Benavides.
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. Helen Markham witnessed the shooting and then saw a man with a gun in his hand leave the scene.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 305, Testimony of Mrs. Helen Markham. Markham identified Oswald as Tippit's killer in a police lineup she viewed that evening.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 318, Testimony of Helen Markham.
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.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 342, Testimony of Mrs. Barbara Jeanette Davis. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, p. 454, Testimony of Mrs. Charlie Virginia Davis.
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".Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, pp. 322–327, Testimony of William W. Scoggins. 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 witnessesWarren Commission Report, pp. 166–169. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 23, p. 817, CE 1968, Location of eyewitnesses to the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald in the vicinity of the Tippit killing. 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.Warren Commission Report, Appendix 10: Expert Testimony, Revolver Cartridges and Cartridge Cases.
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".Cunningham's expert testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. III, p. 475Nicol's expert testimony, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. III, p. 512
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.