John Washburn – Kennedys and King Test Site

The Wrong Bus Transfer – Part 1

Why was a bus transfer for the number 23 Lakewood Line found on Oswald if he’d been on a number 30 Marsalis Line bus?

How Did Oswald Get the Wrong Bus Transfer? – Part 1

Will Fritz’s Freudian slip: Why was a bus transfer for the number 23 Lakewood Line found on Oswald if he’d been on a number 30 Marsalis Line bus?

By the Warren Commission’s account, Lee Oswald got on and then off a Marsalis southbound bus – 12:39-12:43 pm – on Elm Street, Downtown Dallas, just before the intersection with Lamar. However, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig said that approximately 10 minutes after Kennedy was shot (making it 12:40 pm), he saw Oswald running down the slope near the Depository and then getting into a station wagon.

Craig’s affidavit of November 22, 1963, said the man was identical to Oswald, whom he saw again later at 5:18 pm in the office of the head of the Dallas Police Homicide Bureau, Captain Will Fritz, 3 hours after Oswald arrived at City Hall after his arrest at the Texas Theatre.

Craig later testified to the Warren Commission at 2:35 pm, April 1, 1964, before Counsel Belin.

Mr. BELIN – All right. Then, what did Captain Fritz say, what did you say, and what did the suspect say?

Mr. CRAIG – Captain Fritz then asked him about the—uh—he said, “What about this station wagon?”

And the suspect interrupted him and said, “That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine”—I believe that is what he said. “Don’t try to tie her into this. She had nothing to do with it.”

And–uh–Captain Fritz then told him, as close as I can remember, that, “All we’re trying to do is find out what happened, and this man saw you leave from the scene.”

And the suspect again interrupted Captain Fritz and said, “I told you people I did.” And–uh–yeah–then, he said–then he continued and he said, “Everybody will know who I am now.”

By that account, Craig and Oswald himself not only ruled out Oswald being on the Marsalis bus but also linked Ruth Paine – the owner of the house in Irving where Marina Oswald lived and Oswald stayed at weekends – to that car.

But Captain Fritz, in testifying to the Warren Commission (Vol IV, p. 202) on April 22, 1964, to Counsel Ball, said this about Craig.

FRITZ. One deputy sheriff who started to talk to me but he was telling me some things that I knew wouldn’t help us and I didn’t talk to him but someone else took an affidavit from him. His story that he was telling didn’t fit with what we knew to be true.’

Given that all of this relates to the afternoon of November 22, 1963, how could Fritz at that time have possibly known what Craig was telling him was not going to help him? Especially as Fritz claims Craig had only started to tell him something, and Fritz’s account of Oswald’s own story–as I show later–was fluid, inconsistent and far from truthful.

This article explores that question. Was Fritz emitting a Freudian slip?

Nothing appearing as evidence on November 22, 1963, provides a basis for Fritz to have dismissed what Roger Craig always maintained. What does appear in the record is a making up and suppression of evidence instead.

I. The Other Witnesses: Cooper and Robinson

Roy Cooper worked for a military aircraft maker, Ling-Temco-Vought (now part of Northrop Grumman). He told the FBI on November 23, 1963, that he saw a Nash Rambler pick up a man running from the direction of the Depository. Cooper said he was driving behind his boss, Marvin Robinson, who nearly collided with it. The vehicle headed under the overpass in the direction of Oak Cliff.

Cooper told the FBI to contact Robinson at home or at the Naval Air Station at Grand Prairie. Cooper was following Robinson to drop a car off at Robinson’s house, 5120 S Marsalis, Dallas. Marvin Robinson was traced and confirmed that in an interview with the FBI the same day, November 23, 1963.

The Commission file for Roger Craig shows that Robinson was scheduled by Commission staff to testify on April 1, 1964, at 2:30 pm to Counsel Ball, simultaneously with Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig. But his testimony does not appear in any records. Attendance was tightly managed. If a witness did not acknowledge the request to appear, by phone call, the Secret Service made contact to ensure it happened.

Robinson had been very easily traced on November 23 via Cooper as they worked at the same air base. Robinson carried on working on aircraft even in retirement near Dallas. He was very much of fixed abode and workplace and appears at the stated address in the City Directory. There is no explanation as to why Robinson did not testify. Or if he did testify, why is that testimony missing from the records? But whatever the case, Josiah Thompson used his FBI report to telling effect in his early book, Six Seconds in Dallas. If one reads the effect that Robinson’s testimony has combined with Craig’s, which Thompson does, then one may be able to ponder the reason for his absence. (Thompson, pp. 242-43)

The Warren Commission’s report dismissed Craig’s story on the basis that Oswald was on the bus at that same time. But the timeline of Fritz’s denial of Craig’s relevance is also important. Fritz, in testifying to the Warren Commission on April 22, 1964 to Counsel Ball, said this:

Mr. FRITZ. He [Oswald] told me that was the transfer the busdriver had given him when he caught the bus to go home. But he had told me if you will remember in our previous conversation that he rode the bus or on North Beckley and had walked home but in the meantime, someone had told me about him riding a cab.

And,

So, when I asked him [Oswald] about a cab ride if he had ridden in a cab he said yes, he had, he told me wrong about the bus, he had rode a cab. He said the reason he changed, that he rode the bus for a short distance, and the crowd was so heavy and traffic was so bad that he got out and caught a cab, and I asked him some other questions about the cab and I asked him what happened there when he caught the cab and he said there was a lady trying to catch a cab and he told the busdriver, the busdriver told him to tell the lady to catch the cab behind him and he said he rode that cab over near his home, he rode home in a cab.

Fritz was misleadingly inaccurate regarding the “someone” in the “meantime”. By cab driver William Whaley’s testimony of March 12, 1964, in Washington, and his affidavit of November 23, the cab lead, and his description of the lady, etc., didn’t appear until the next day, November 23. Whaley testified thus.

Mr. BALL. Later that day did you-were you called down to the police department?

Mr. WHALEY. No, sir.

Mr. BALL. Were you the next day?

Mr. WHALEY. No, sir; they came and got me, sir, the next day after I told my superior when I saw in the paper his picture, I told my superiors that that had been my passenger that day at noon. They called up the police and they came up and got me.

Mr. BALL. When you saw in the newspaper the picture of the man?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. You went to your superior and told him you thought he was your passenger?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.

So up to the point when Craig was telling Fritz something, there was nothing to provide any basis to dismiss what Craig was telling him. Indeed, Fritz’s account of Oswald changing his story of how he got to Beckley cannot be true, given that there was no cab revelation that day.

Fritz’s peremptory dismissal of Roger Craig’s story seems to be based on Fritz making up a counter-story that is full of holes and contradictions.

By April 1, 1964, the story that Oswald was identified on the bus was in tatters.

II. The Misidentification of Oswald by the Bus Driver

Without a lead to a cab on November 22, all there was to go on was the bus transfer, which was allegedly found on Oswald at around 4:05 pm on November 22, by Detective Simms, just as Oswald was taken downstairs for his first witness lineup (see later).

The transfer lead involved driver Cecil McWatters and his Line 30 Marsalis bus. However, and counter to what Fritz had said, Oswald originally told him that the bus line wasn’t a route to Oswald’s 1026 N Beckley rooming house. The Marsalis line deviated ¾ mile before that Beckley destination, at the south end of the Houston Street Viaduct.

This is then from the testimony of Detective Dhority taken on April 6, 1964. The lineup referred to is Oswald’s second.

Mr. BALL. What was the first thing that you did that day with respect to the investigation of the President’s assassination?

Mr. DHORITY. Around 6 p.m., Detective Brown and myself went out and got Mr. McWatters from the bus in front of the city hall there and brought him into the lineup and took an affidavit off of him.

Ball then read from that affidavit taken on November 22.

Mr. BALL. What did McWatters say to you?

Mr. DHORITY. He identified him as the man that rode on the bus and said he wasn’t for sure exactly where he picked him up, but he said he believed that he got off shortly after he got on the bus, but after he identified him he went upstairs and looked at a transfer that Detective Sims had took out of Oswald’s pocket, and he positively identified the transfer as his transfer.

Mr. BALL. You took McWatters’ affidavit after that, didn’t you?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Right after he had made an identification?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Of Oswald?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. At that time, and I’ll show you a copy of an affidavit by McWatters, and will you take a look at that, please?

Mr. DHORITY. [Examined instrument referred to.]

Mr. BALL. Mr. Dhority, after the showup, did you take the affidavit from Mr. McWatters?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, I did.

Mr. BALL. Now, in the affidavit here he says he picked up a man on the lower end of town on Elm and Houston and went out on Marsalis and picked up a woman, and then he mentions that as he went out, “This man was grinning and never did say anything. The woman said that it was not a grinning matter. I don’t remember where I let this man off. This man looks like the No. 2 man I saw in a lineup tonight.”.Now, you read that, didn’t you?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes.

But as Ball noted, the positive identification Dhority cited did not accord with what McWatters’ affidavit actually said. Nor did it accord with McWatters’ FBI statement the next day, November 23 (page 6). That FBI statement said.

MCWATTERS stated that he went to the Dallas Police Department on November 22, 1963, and from a lineup picked a man whom he said is the only one in the lineup who resembles the man who had ridden on his bus on November 22, 1963. He stated that this man was LEE OSWALD, but emphasized that he cannot specifically identify him as being on his bus or as being the person who made the remark to the effect that the President was shot in the temple.

He stated he “cannot be sure where this man got off the bus, but he believes it was south of Saner Avenue in Oak Cliff”.

Saner Avenue was near the south end of the Marsalis line, over 5 miles from Elm Street. The bus was scheduled for arrival at the Saner end of the line at 12:58 pm (CE378).

Dhority’s assertions are also discredited by what McWatters testified 25 days earlier to the Commission in Washington on March 12, 1964 (Vol II page 263), immediately after Whaley.

McWatters withdrew any identification of Oswald entirely and said the person he’d seen on the bus was actually Roy Milton Jones, a teenager.

Mr. BALL – Now you realize you were mistaken in your identification that night?

Mr. McWATTERS – That is right.

Mr. BALL – As I understand it, neither then nor now are you able to identify or say that you have again seen the man that got off your bus to whom you gave a transfer?

Mr. McWATTERS – No, sir; I couldn’t. I could not identify him.

Milton Jones was traced at the Commission’s request. On March 30, 1964, he told the FBI (CE2641) that the bus was held up by police boarding it on Elm Street for almost an hour and said he got off at Marsalis@Brownley at 1:45 pm. That is one block south of Saner Avenue and hence chimes with McWatters’ account. But given that is where the bus should have been circa 12:56 pm, the bus was 50 minutes late.

All of McWatters’ police and FBI statements were silent about the delay and the police boarding causing it. But Milton Jones’ account can be corroborated on time. The Dallas Morning News of 28 November 1963, reported.

“The cashier of the Texas Theater immediately called the police – who had just sped en masse to a false alarm at the Dallas Library branch on Jefferson, further to the east. The police sirens wailed again. Oddly enough it was at the library that McWatters, the bus driver who, unknowingly, had Oswald as a passenger earlier, had his second brush with fate. His bus pulled up at the intersection as a swarm of 10 or 15 police cars zeroed in on the library, *I couldn’t imagine what was going on” said McWatters. “Little did I know!“.

That false sighting of Oswald at the library at Marsalis and Jefferson appears on the patrol radio around 1:30 pm. The bus should have been there at 12:50 pm (CE378), thus it was at least 40 minutes late. That would make a late arrival at Saner of 1:40 pm. Thus corroborating what Milton Jones told the FBI.

Milton Jones told the FBI that he and McWatters talked about those events on Monday, November 25, when Milton Jones was back on the bus again.

Milton Jones also revealed to the FBI that McWatters told him the DPD had questioned him until 1:00 am the next day.

Seven hours is a long time to hold a witness who hadn’t actually made a positive identification of Oswald. But it would be consistent with trying to turn things into “evidence”.

Nevertheless, Oswald was charged on November 22, 1964, for the murder of Officer JD Tippit by relying on McWatters and the bus story as the explanation for how Oswald could have gotten to 1026 N Beckley to then get to the Tippit murder scene.

Given the discrepancies on the person, the time and the place, then the story of the bus transfer must also be in doubt.

Rather than incriminating Oswald, the transfer actually incriminates the police. The transfer supposedly found on Oswald was not for Line 30 Marsalis, but Line 23 Lakewood.

III. THE BUS ROUTE, TIMES AND THE TRANSFER

The Line 30 Marsalis route McWatters was driving was also known as Marsalis-Munger. It was confirmed by the foreman at the bus company, Mr. JE Cook (McWatters file page 8). Munger is a district north of Downtown, as well as an intersection towards Lakewood on Gaston Avenue. He said the sign would have been set for “30 • Marsalis – Union Station” and set the signs for that for FBI photographs for the Commission.

McWatters, in testifying to the Commission, said that he was scheduled for that run from 11:52 am until 2:27 pm, when he then switched lines.

The bus schedule (CE378) shows that Marsalis Line 30, 1213, started its crosstown schedule at 12:11 pm from Ellsworth/Anita (Lakewood), Gaston Avenue (a long road running south to Downtown), Elm Street (Downtown), Houston Street (Dealey Plaza), North and South Marsalis Avenue (Oak Cliff), with a scheduled end at Ann Arbor (Saner district), at 12:58 pm.

The turnaround schedule (heading to Munger) was to be back at Lakewood at 2:11 pm, then ending at Gaston@Paulus 2:20 pm, which leads to the bus transfer ticket.

A bus transfer is a form of ticket issued when a passenger breaks a journey, enabling a follow-up journey on another connecting bus line, without paying another full fare. According to McWatters’ Warren Commission testimony, a passenger had to give a reason for getting a transfer.

The Commission photograph of the transfer 004459 supposedly found on Oswald, which appears as CE383-A, is blurry to read, but the one on the left is a color one via John Armstrong.

Drivers were given books, each containing 50 transfers preprinted for the date. The first transfer was torn off and left at the depot as the receipt for taking that book. The photo on the right is transfer 004451. The 1963 Dallas transfer states it was valid “within 15 minutes from the time indicated on the first point of intersection or transfer point for connecting lines”.

The transfer had punches for relevant boxes, except for the time, which was cut. The same ticket company, Globe Ticket Co, still exists and still sells cutters and punchers. Comparing these two transfers shows how CE381-A was cut back to the first possible time, 1:00 and punched PM. Whereas, a horizontal cut at the foot would be 12:45.

Transfers were charged at much less than full fare. Given that an incentive to tamper would be to extend to a later time to create a cheap ride, then the cutting system is tamper-proof. All later hours and minutes are cut off. The Dallas transfer above has a list of 17 bus lines. Each Dallas bus line had a name and number. (See page 12 of this Ford Presidential Library document) This later Dallas Bus map still tallies with the routes on the Globe transfer described above.

A review of the names and numbers of the 17 bus lines shows that routes are not systematically named for the ends of the lines, which would require two names. Instead, for the transfers, the Dallas lines were named unsystematically on the basis of any road or district of prominence on the line, e.g., 22 Beckley, 15 Ramona, and 30 Marsalis are names of middles and not ends of bus lines. Downtown was the start of the Beckley line. Lakewood is the district where the Ramona line and the Marsalis line started/ended. But Lakewood was also the name of a line itself. Its route – 23 – is shown in the FBI dossier (page 90, top right). It ran from the Lakewood district and terminated at Downtown, Union Station, and returned to Lakewood.

A punched hole would indicate the relevant bus line. As did boxes indicating direction of travel “NSEW”, North, South, East and West, so that a passenger could not skip paying for a return ticket by doubling backward.

But the Dallas transfer did have a “Shopper” box which, if punched, did enable someone who had asked for that form of transfer to get a return bus ride – once they had spent more than a dollar in a participating store. McWatters said that at that time of day, transfers were usually used by elderly people shopping.

These lines crossed the Trinity River into Oak Cliff, thus,

Marsalis bus Line 30. Also known as “Munger”. The one Oswald was supposed to have boarded and then disembarked from. That ran from Lakewood, along Gaston through Downtown on Elm, over Houston St Viaduct along North and South Marsalis ending at Ann Arbor/Saner and back.
Ramona bus Line 15. That shared the same Downtown route as Marsalis until over the river, where it branched off Marsalis, to Ramona, ending at Singing Hills.
Elmwood Line 42. That ended south of the river at Elmwood (not to be confused with Ellwood) and has no relevance here.
The Beckley bus Line 22. That started Downtown, crossed the Trinity River on the Commerce Viaduct and went down North and South Beckley to Kiest and back. That would have been the direct bus for Oswald to go to work at the Depository from his 1026 N Beckley rooming house.
Other buses running along Beckley, Belmont Line 1 and Skillman Line 20. CE2694.

The above-cited lines are all visible on the CE381-A transfer.

The ticketing system Dallas used was widespread in the USA. The Reading Bus Co ticket, for example, is explicit on the ticket that the convention was that a punch indicated the line the journey had started on.

That is consistent with wording on CE381-A stating 15-minute validity “for connecting lines”. Plural. Meaning any lines connecting with the one disembarked from and punched for. A passenger transferring on Elm from any one of Beckley, Marsalis, Elmwood, Skillman, Bellmont or Ramona would have – at least – the five other lines to choose to transfer to.

IV. The Question about the Wrong Punch

The transfer, which appears as CE381-A, is punched not for the Marsalis • 30 line but the Lakewood • 23 line. The Lakewood line in either direction would be of no use to Oswald – nor anyone else – heading to Oak Cliff. Counsel Ball asked McWatters why CE381-A would be punched for [Line 23] “Lakewood”.

McWatters gave the Commission a convoluted story about punching the hole next to “Lakewood [23]” as Lakewood was an end of the Marsalis [30] route. He said in the following (my square brackets).

“Going that way, while at Marsalis, I would punch the Lakewood when I would leave Marsalis coming toward Lakewood [hence northbound], I would have Lakewood on the front of my bus [hence also northbound] but I would punch the transfer Marsalis.”

This is patently absurd. Firstly, he merely described northbound journeys in a different way but punched inconsistently. Secondly, even if he had his own system of punching “Lakewood” as a destination, it couldn’t possibly be a destination from a stop on one-way Elm Street for a Line 30 Marsalis bus heading south towards Marsalis.

McWatters seems to be trying to find excuses for punching a transfer for the Lakewood Line 23 when he was driving the Marsalis 30 Line, and as per the photograph above, with “30 Marsalis” on the sign.

McWatters’ account of him being called to the police department for the lineup chimes with Dhority above. McWatters was only shown the – problematic – Lakewood Line 23 transfer after he had attended the Oswald lineup.

Mr. Ball. Now, you were called down to the Dallas police department later, weren’t you?

Mr. McWatters. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. What day was it?

Mr. McWatters. It was on the same day, the 22d.

Mr. Ball. 22d. Do you know how they happened to get in touch with you, did you notify them that you——

Mr. McWatters. No, sir; I didn’t know anything to that effect.

Mr. Ball. Did they come out and get you?

Mr. McWatters. They come out and——

Mr. Ball. What did they ask you?

Mr. McWatters. Well, they stopped me; it was, I would say around 6:15 or somewhere around 6:15 or 6:20 that afternoon.

Mr. Ball. You were still on duty, were you?

Mr. McWatters. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. Still on your bus?

Mr. McWatters. I was on duty but I was on a different line and a different bus.

Mr. Ball. What did they ask you when they came out?

Mr. McWatters. Well, they stopped me right by the city hall there when I come by there and they wanted me to come in, they wanted to ask me some questions. And I don’t know what it was about or anything until I got in there and they told me what happened.

Mr. Ball. What did they tell you?

Mr. McWatters. Well, they told me that they had a transfer that I had issued that was cut for Lamar Street at 1 o’clock, and they wanted to know if I knew anything about it. And I, after I looked at the transfer and my punch, I said yes, that is the transfer I issued because it had my punch mark on it.

It is perplexing how the police could have deduced Lamar. There is no reference to Lamar on the transfer. Ball picked up on that, with McWatters then confirming it was impossible.

Mr. BALL – If this transfer was issued around the Lamar area or St. Paul–Elm area, is there any place that you could punch and show that particular location?
Mr. McWATTERS – No, sir.

McWatters then undermined his own assertion of Lamar with this.

Mr. Ball. When you got to the police station that day did they show you a transfer?

Mr. McWatters. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. What did you tell them about the transfer?

Mr. McWatters. Well, I recognized the transfer as being the transfer that I had issued.

Mr. Ball. How did you recognize it?

Mr. McWatters. By my punch mark on it.

Mr. Ball. And what about the line?

Mr. McWatters. The line?

Mr. Ball. Lakewood.

Mr. McWatters. The Lakewood punch on it, and where it was punched and Lakewood with my punch mark on it.

The purpose of a transfer is to convey information to a different driver on the bus that the holder chooses to board next. A system needs consistency and understandability for passengers as well as drivers. What McWatters was saying is inconsistent and incomprehensible.

Click here to read part 2.

October 1, 2025

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

Even Commission lawyers Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert had suspicions about the tall tales of Larry Crafrard and, among other things, his incredible journey from Dallas to Michigan.

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

By John Washburn

LEAD V

Crafard’s alibi for November 22

Crafard, when interviewed by the FBI on November 29, 1963, claimed he was sleeping at the Carousel Club during Kennedy’s assassination on November 22. He stated he overslept and was awakened by a phone call from Armstrong at 11:30 am and then again in person between 12:30 and 12:45 pm.

With Ruby detained for Oswald’s murder, Andrew Armstrong managed the Carousel Club. An African American who handled the bar and cash takings, Armstrong was interviewed by FBI Agents Lish and Wilson on November 25, 1963 (CE5310-A). His testimonies are consolidated as CE5310 A-G here.

That first interview focused on Jack Ruby, his reactions to Kennedy’s assassination, and a list of club employees. Crafard was not mentioned.

Agent Lish (CE5310-B) visited Armstrong again that day, and Crafard was of interest, likely after Patterson’s lead. The second interview revealed Crafard had left on Saturday, and his whereabouts were unknown. But Armstrong found and handed over Crafard’s notebook, entered into evidence as CE5230. A typewritten transcript of it was made on November 27, which is on file but not included in the Commission’s evidence.

FBI Agents Peggs and Zimmerman then made a third visit on November 26 (p.288 WC files, no exhibit). Because Armstrong had found a letter from Crafard’s cousin, Gail Cascadden, which listed her address as Box 303, Harrison, Michigan. Page 288 includes the notebook transcription and a typed copy of Gail’s letter. It was that letter which enabled the FBI to trace Crafard to rural Michigan, where he was found on November 28.

Only on January 23, 1964, to Agents Sayer and Clements (CE5310-G), did Armstrong provide an alibi for Crafard regarding November 22, 1963. But Armstrong did not then (nor ever) mention Crafard’s claim of being awakened at 11:30 am.

Armstrong’s improbable journey

Armstrong lived at Dixon Circle, Dallas, over 4 miles due east from Downtown.

Armstrong testified on April 14, 1964, that his regular working hours were from 1:00 pm to 1:00 am, and he typically left home at noon to catch the bus from Dixon Circle to Downtown. That would have been the 12/50 bus route along Scyene Road (Dallas City bus map). Armstrong said that he usually unlocked the club just before 1:00 pm and stocked the refrigerator so that the beers would be cold later in the day.

In his January 23, 1964, FBI statement, Armstrong said that on November 22, 1963, he boarded a bus near his home at 11:53 pm, arrived at Main and Akard at 12:25 pm, missed the motorcade, but saw it was west at Main and Lamar before walking to the Carousel, arriving at 12:30 pm. The Carousel Club was on Commerce near Field, one block south of Field and Main. It would be a 2–3-minute walk from Main and Field to the Carousel.

He said he took his jacket off and went to the men’s room. When he left there, he said he was curious about hearing sirens and hence got a transistor radio and listened to KLIF Dallas. Then he heard the President had been shot and tried to wake Crafard, but Crafard did not wake. He listened for two minutes more, then heard the President had gone to Parkland. Then he woke Crafard.

He said that 15 minutes later, Ruby called from the Dallas Morning News and asked, “Had he heard the news?” He then said if “anything happens to Kennedy, the club will close.” He carried on listening until the announcement that Kennedy was dead at 1:30. He said Ruby arrived at 1:45-2:00 pm. Ruby said “what a terrible thing,” and the club would close for 3 days. Ruby made calls. Then he heard the announcement of the death of Tippit. (CE5310-G p320.)

If Armstrong was on a westbound bus on Main Street, missing the motorcade but still seeing part of it further down (by his description, three blocks down), then there is a very narrow time window in which his arrival can have occurred.

The Motorcade – running 5 minutes late – entered Main Street at Harwood (at City Hall) at 12:25 pm and was at Field and Main at 12:27 pm, Main and Houston at 12:29, and Kennedy was assassinated on Elm at 12:30 pm.

If Armstrong was on a bus ahead of the motorcade, he would have observed the entire event. So, to have just missed it, Armstrong would have had to have arrived on Main immediately after the motorcade had, approximately 12:26 pm. But when he testified to the Commission, he claimed to have arrived at the Carousel at 12:15-12:20 pm. That places him at least 5-10 minutes ahead of the motorcade, and he wouldn’t have missed any of it.

Further, if Armstrong could get from Dixon Circle to Main Street on a noon bus that could get him to the Carousel that quickly, then, on a normal working day, he would be arriving over half an hour too early for his 1:00 pm arrival. Added to which a noon bus from Dixon Circle would be hard pushed to arrive on Main in 20 minutes, even in normal day traffic conditions.

But Armstrong then undermined his account even further. He testified he got up at 9 am, took the noon bus to see the parade, and stopped at Moore’s Barbers on the way. Merely adding the haircut time would have made it impossible for him to reach Main Street until well after 12:30 pm.

The Dallas City Directory shows there were two Moore’s Barber Shops, 1124 S Haskell and 1125 Stonewall. Both of those were several blocks north of the Scyene bus route, a ten-minute walk. That detour would add an extra 20 minutes.

This is what Armstrong said to the Commission about the barbers.

Mr. HUBERT. And you got to the club about what time?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. It must time been about 12:15-12:20, or something like that, because when I got downtown I could see portions of the parade, you know, like I got off of the bus at Main and Field- at Main and Akard, I’m sorry, which is the usual stop, I always get off at Main and Akard, and further down you could see portions of the parade, but I felt that I had missed the parade I didn’t realize that I had missed the parade until I was in the barber shop and thought, well, maybe I’ll get downtown, I said to myself, and I will see some portion of it, but when I got downtown I was surprised to see that the parade had moved forward – further down.

Anyone who’d left home at noon and intended to stop by the barbers shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. With the motorcade scheduled for 12:20 pm on Main, he could not have made it.

Crafard and the sleep story

Hubert asked Armstrong if he had called Crafard to wake him up (Crafard’s 11:30 am call claim). Armstrong said no and added that he didn’t usually wake him even if he was asleep upon arrival.

Armstrong’s account of the events at the Carousel Club was also inconsistent. On January 23, 1964, he told the FBI that he went to the restroom when he heard sirens and learned of the assassination via a transistor radio. He ran to wake Larry, found the door open, but despite his efforts, Larry fell back asleep. Armstrong then returned to the restroom without waking Larry.

Gary DeLaune, a news anchor at KLIF radio in Dallas, Texas, was the first to break the news at 12:40 pm. CBS-TV, with sound only, started at 12:45 pm. WFAA Dallas started live TV at 12:45 pm with Bill and Gayle Newman, the closest civilian eyewitnesses to the fatal shot to Kennedy’s head.

Armstrong then said he heard further reports, and 2 minutes later, he went to wake Larry up, and this time, Larry got up and dressed.

That places Armstrong in the restroom from 12:15 pm to 12:40 pm on one account (for the Commission) and 12:30 pm-12:40 pm on the other (for the FBI).

However, Armstrong’s inconsistent and impossible ‘alibis’ for Crafard were blown apart by Crafard himself when he testified in Washington on 8^th, 9^th and 10^th April 1964. WC Vol XIV.

Crafard was actually an early riser.

Mr. HUBERT. Do you drink much?
Mr. CRAFARD. Very seldom. I drank, I think, three or four different times while I was there that I drank a beer or two, that was all.
Mr. HUBERT. So that your heavy sleep on the morning of the 22d couldn’t be attributed to the fact that you had a hangover?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. HUBERT. Or that you were suffering from any overindulgence in alcohol?
Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir.
Mr. HUBERT. You don’t take any kind of sleeping pills or anything like that?
Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir.
Mr. HUBERT. So this was just normal sleep?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. And his call failed to wake you?

Mr. CRAFARD. I left the 23d of November, I believe it was.
Mr. HUBERT. What were your hours there?
Mr. CRAFARD. Any hours. I would just get up, I usually got up about 8 o’clock in the morning and I would be lucky if I would get to bed before 3:30, 4 o’clock.
Mr. HUBERT. How come you would get up so early?
Mr. CRAFARD. Get the club cleaned up.
Mr. HUBERT. Wasn’t there a man to help?
Mr. CRAFARD. I took care of that mostly myself

Mr. CRAFARD. If I started cleaning up at 9 o’clock I would be finished by 11:30.

Mr. HUBERT. In other words, you had 2 1/2 hours?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

Mr. HUBERT. Were you then usually free?

Mr. CRAFARD. No. Jack would come in about 11:30 and be there 2 or 3 hours. After he left I had to stay there and answer the phone.

Mr. HUBERT. What was the purpose of keeping you around the club after your cleanup job was over?
Mr. CRAFARD. So far as I understand just mostly answer the phone.
Mr. HUBERT. Were there many phone calls to be answered?
Mr. CRAFARD. There was quite a few that would come in–generally, usually, people calling in, would start calling in about 1 o’clock for reservations.

The cold beer story

Then, contrary to Armstrong’s account of leaving home at noon on November 22, 1963, Crafard’s testimony put Armstrong arriving at the club at 9:30 am.

Mr. CRAFARD. Andy woke me that morning. He come in early. Andy always put the beer in and he come in early to do that so that he could have the rest of the day off.

Mr. HUBERT. What time did Andy come in?

Mr. CRAFARD. I think it was about 9:30 or something like that.

Mr. HUBERT. Came in personally?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes. He was there when the President was shot.

Mr. HUBERT. Were you asleep when he came in?

Mr. CRAFARD. I was asleep when he came in.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you waken up when he came in?

Mr. CRAFARD. I didn’t wake up—Andy woke me up and told me that the President had been shot.

There seems to be some confusion here. And Hubert should have clarified it. Because if Armstrong came in that early, he could not have told Crafard about the JFK murder. Jack Ruby did little to help.

Ruby on June 7, 1964, told the Warren Commission party at the jail, regarding his actions when he was at the Dallas Morning News: “I could have called my colored boy, Andy, down at the club. I could have-I don’t know who else I would have called, but I could have. Because it is so long now since my mind is very much warped now.”

If Crafard was at the club and Armstrong was having a half day, then Ruby would have expected to have called Crafard. Did Ruby think that Crafard was not going to be there?

Crafard didn’t even sleep at the club towards the end

Stripper Karen Carlin ‘Little Lynn’, who testified before Hubert on April 15, 1964 (WC Vol XIII), said Crafard did not sleep at the club. She said she worked at the Carousel for 2 months before the assassination, to the end of December 1963, and she worked 7 days a week.

Mr. Hubert. Do you remember a man that stayed there and slept on the premises?

Mrs. Carlin. No; I don’t know of anyone that did. Andrew was the only one I knew that ever spent the night there, and that was just because he would say so the next evening. He said, “I am tired.” He said, “I had to stay here all night.”

Mr. Hubert. I might add that this man Larry’s full name was Curtis Laverne Crafard.

Mrs. Carlin. Yes. That was a little young boy, the one that worked the lights.

Mr. Hubert. He stayed on the premises?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes. But he stayed next door most of the time. I know he was sleeping there for a while, but Jack put a stop to it.

Mr. Hubert. You mean Jack wouldn’t let him sleep in the club?

Mrs. Carlin. Jack didn’t like him sleeping there, because there was too many things gone.

Mr. Hubert. Then he made him go next door?

Mrs. Carlin. He went next door. I don’t know who was next door or what it was next door, but he went next door.

Mr. Hubert. But what you heard was that this man had, Crafard, Curtis Laverne Crafard had been staying on the premises, but that Jack had put a stop to it and made him move to some place next door, but you don’t know which next door?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Hubert. Who did you hear this from?

Mrs. Carlin. It was from Larry. He was taking care of the dogs or something.

Mr. Hubert. He told you he had to move out?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Hubert. Out of the premises altogether?

Mrs. Carlin. No. He just said, “I am going to have to move. I can’t stay here. I don’t know where I am going to get the money, but I am going to have to move.”

Mr. Hubert. That must have happened just before the assassination of the President?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes. After that I didn’t see Larry no more.

Mr. Hubert. So to your knowledge he never did actually move, but just said he was going to have to move, and he informed you that Jack had told him he would have to move?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Jackson. When you say move, you mean move out at night and not sleep there?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Hubert. That is what I meant, to move next door, I think is what you meant?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

(The Jackson who interjected was her attorney.)

In her FBI statement of November 26, 1963, taken at the Carousel Club to agents Peggs and Zimmerman (Tuesday) CE5318, Carlin said that she’d last seen Ruby at the club the night before the assassination.

By all that, Carlin didn’t see Crafard at the club after he’d moved out of it, and that was before the assassination.

“Next door”, may have been the Colony Club. Crafard’s not being at the Carousel Club would be due to his working at the Vegas Club near Lucas B&B, which is where he was seen by Mary Lawrence, as confirmed in Crafard’s November 28, 1963, FBI statement. But Crafard, when he testified, left out any mention of working at the Vegas Club before the assassination.

Mr. CRAFARD. I have tried to think of what I was doing before, the night before [the assassination], a couple nights before, or something like that. I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary.
Mr. HUBERT. If it was the ordinary, then I suppose it would have been that the club closed up at its usual hour.
Mr. CRAFARD. As far as I recall, yes.
Mr. HUBERT. And you were still sleeping there?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes; I was still sleeping there.
Mr. HUBERT. So you would have gone to sleep?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUBERT. And then I suppose Ruby would have wakened you?
Mr. CRAFARD. Andy woke me that morning. He come in early. Andy always put the beer in and he come in early to do that so that he could have the rest of the day off.

Was Armstrong trying to give Crafard an alibi? But in doing so, Armstrong got tied in knots and created a highly improbable travel time scenario for himself, which Crafard himself seemed confused about.

Armstrong testified at Ruby’s trial in March 1964 and told the Warren Commission he spoke with Crafard, who also testified for Ruby, in a courtroom corridor. That brief interaction likely did not give them time to align their stories.

Crafard and the TV

Crafard claimed to be watching TV after the assassination. Hubert tested him.

Mr. HUBERT. It was a Dallas station or a Fort Worth station?
Mr. CRAFARD. It is one there they call the Dallas-Fort Worth, WWTV12, I think it is.
Mr. HUBERT. KLRD, is that what it is?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t know what station it is. I am not sure whether it was WWTV.
Mr. HUBERT. How long did you stay there watching?
Mr. CRAFARD. We turned it up real loud where we could hear it and then listened to his radio, too, where we would hear both of them.
Mr. HUBERT. Go ahead, what happened next?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t recall exactly what was said except the fact that the President had been shot.
Mr. HUBERT. How long did you continue to watch it?
Mr. CRAFARD. We watched it right up until–most of the day, I think, we had the television on there, then, most of the day.

A remarkably vacant memory for some very eventful testimony by, for example, Bill and Gayle Newman, taking up much of the coverage.

In CE2430, a very late interview with the FBI on August 27, 1964. Crafard stressed that he was with Ruby when they both heard of the death of Tippit – by name – and the death of Kennedy.

However, Kennedy’s death was announced at approximately 1:35 pm by TV and around 1:25 pm by radio. There was no announcement of the death of Tippit by name before Oswald’s arrest at the Texas Theatre at 1:50 pm. Indeed, by 2:00 pm, the DPD radio tapes show that Tippit’s wife had not been told.

Whereas Armstrong in his FBI interview of January 23, 1964 CE5310-G says, correctly, that the name of Tippit didn’t appear until after the official announcement of the death of Kennedy. He said Ruby arrived 15-20 minutes after the official announcement of that, and then made one or two phone calls in about 5 minutes. It was after this, when KLIF mentioned the names of Tippit and Armstrong, he said that Ruby told him he knew Tippit. There is no mention of Crafard.

LEAD VI

Crafard and the police badge

There is also this detail in Karen Carlin’s FBI statement,

“She said that LARRY attempted to impress her by showing her a badge and telling her that he was a policeman.”

In my “Death of Tippit article, I suggested that Tippit was waiting at Gloco, the end of the Houston Street Viaduct, to pick up whoever was on the Beckley bus, acting out the narrative that it was the way Oswald was making a getaway from Downtown. When Oswald most likely had actually been driven to the Theater in a Rambler.

It is also important to remember why Karen Carlin was asked to testify. She was a key witness for the official line that it was her telephoning Ruby for her wages that caused him to be at Western Union opposite City Hall at 11:15 am on November 24 (Sunday), where he then happened on the transfer of Oswald.

However, she actually said two things contrary to that line. She testified that Ruby said on Saturday, November 23, 1963, “I don’t know when I will open. I don’t know if I will ever open back up. And he was very hateful.”

That seems to suggest premeditation by Ruby, perhaps having an inkling of the consequences of what he was going to do next, to Oswald.

Also, when she testified to the Commission, she said that Ruby had said to her on the telephone on the morning of November 24 (she in Fort Worth, he at his apartment on South Ewing), “Well I have to go downtown anyway”.

Ruby himself, when he testified after his trial, said. “So my purpose was to go to the Western Union–my double purpose but the thought of doing, committing the act wasn’t until I left my apartment.”

Having a ‘double purpose’ in going to Western Union also indicates premeditation.

LEAD VII

The incredible journey. How did Crafard get to Michigan?

Crafard said he took Routes 66 and 77, passing by Oklahoma City, St Louis, MO, then the outskirts of Chicago, IL. From there to Lansing, MI, Mount Pleasant and then Clare, MI, where he arrived at 9:00 pm on Monday, November 25, and stayed with his cousin, Clifford Roberts. A total distance of 1,282 miles.

Crafard said that the 59-hour trek began when he decided to leave Downtown Dallas at 11-11:15 am on November 23 (Saturday). He had only $7 on him, he was carrying two bags, and he walked 15-18 blocks until he hitched a ride.

Remarkably, he said the first ride was from a person he knew from the State Fair, but did not know his name.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you walk there?
Mr. CRAFARD. I walked out about 15 or 18 blocks, I think it is, and a guy I had met out at the fair picked me up. He saw me.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you arrange for him to pick you up?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; he was going by, he saw me, and he recognized me.
Mr. HUBERT. What is his name?
Mr. CRAFARD. How’s that?
Mr. HUBERT. What is his name?

Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t remember what his name is. He worked out there for a while. I never did know his name. I don’t think he knew my name. He recognized me as having worked out there.
Mr. HUBERT. You were on the highway hitchhiking at that time?
Mr. CRAFARD. That’s right.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you have a bag?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. How large was it?
Mr. CRAFARD. It was a regular satchel and I had another bag

Hubert elsewhere displayed incredulity about the tale of rides and the fact that Crafard said he had $7 on leaving Dallas. But he still had $3 left when he left Clare on Tuesday to go to Harrison. –This was to visit his aunt Esther Eaton and cousin Gale Cascadden – where he stayed the Tuesday night and then hitched to Kalkaska (another 85 miles) to stay with his sister Cora Ingersoll, Wednesday night. It was there that he was traced by the FBI, and he was interviewed on the 29^th ( the day after Thanksgiving), in the morning at nearby Bellaire, MI.

Assuming that the first ride from Dallas was around noon, with Crafard saying he arrived in St Louis around 6:00 am on Sunday, then that was 705 miles in 18 hours, averaging 39 mph.

Then he said he did St Louis to the Chicago outskirts. I measure that distance as Country Club Hills, where the road bears to Michigan, at about 284 miles. He told Hubert he arrived there at 2 pm on Sunday. That’s 8 hours, averaging 35.5 mph and the whole Dallas to Chicago journey averages 37.6 mph. After that, his description of getting from the Chicago outskirts to Clare breaks down as: to Lansing, 212 miles, then Mount Pleasant, 69 miles and then Clare, 16 miles, arriving 9 pm, Monday.

That’s 31 hours, averaging 9 mph. Had he averaged 35 mph, he could have done it in 8 hours. But Crafard did not describe any long stops, sleepovers, or waits for lifts. He described near continuous travel. Hubert picked up that the final 16 miles from Mt Pleasant to Clare, according to Crafard, took 12 hours.

Mr. HUBERT. Then there is some mistake in timing of about 12 hours.

Mr. CRAFARD. That is what I was saying. I’ve lost some time there

Mr. HUBERT. It may be that you are making a mistake, Larry. Let’s see if we can’t refresh your memory from the time you got that last long hitch that took you to Mount Pleasant because you remember getting to Mount Pleasant at night, about 8:30.

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

Mr. HUBERT. And that, you say, is a run of what–about 5 hours, 6 hours?

Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t believe it would take that long.

Mr. HUBERT. So if you got there at about 8:30 at night, then either you didn’t get any hitches for a long period of time, or else something else happened.

Mr. CRAFARD. I’m just trying to—-

Mr. HUBERT. Because you told us, and if it is not so, why we want you to correct it. Everybody can make mistakes.

Mr. HUBERT. You said that you picked up this ride at a point 60 miles outside of Lansing and into Mount Pleasant prior to dawn on the 25th. Now, maybe that is wrong. Maybe you got that ride late in the day. Let’s put it this way. Was that a continuous ride straight on?

Mr. CRAFARD. It carried me straight on through to Mount Pleasant.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you stop at all?

Mr. CRAFARD. Not that I can recall. It isn’t that long a run across there.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you stop for lunch or anything of that sort?

Putting all into context. Crafard got from Dallas to the Chicago end of Lake Michigan in 1 day 2 hours, 77% of the distance. But he took 1 day, 7 hours to travel 23% of the trip, within Michigan itself. Hubert spotted that the most egregious time discrepancies occur from when he said he missed Chicago by bypassing it.

Mr. HUBERT. He didn’t take you through Chicago?

Mr. CRAFARD. No; I bypassed most of Chicago.

Mr. HUBERT. How did you do that?

Mr. CRAFARD. On a couple alternate routes.

Mr. HUBERT. With hitchhikers?

Mr. CRAFARD. Different rides.

Mr. HUBERT. Different rides?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

Mr. HUBERT. How many?

Mr. CRAFARD. I got three or four different rides in Chicago.

Mr. HUBERT. With these several rides around Chicago, bypassing it, how long did it take you to get around Chicago?

Mr. CRAFARD. Probably 2 or 3 hours.

Mr. HUBERT. And these were all short ones?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

We can almost see Hubert raising his eyebrows.

When did Crafard hear Ruby had shot Oswald?

Ruby shot Oswald on live TV at 11:21 am on Sunday. By Crafard’s described journey, Oswald was shot when Crafard would have been heading to Chicago; then he had 3-4 rides bypassing it, then he took the one to Lansing. That is 5-6 rides, with the opportunity to hear the radio news of the big story, or any of the drivers commenting on it if they’d already heard it.

Earl Ruby testified (Vol XIV) that he heard at noon that day, whilst on a phone call, that Oswald had been shot. He turned on the radio and, within 10 or so minutes, learned that his brother Jack had done it.

Therefore, anyone first hearing of the shooting after 12:30 pm on Sunday, November 24, 1963, would know that Oswald was shot, and Ruby had done it. To know the former but not the latter could only have occurred early, between 11:21 am and 12:30 pm.

So, when did Crafard say he heard that Oswald was shot, and Jack Ruby was the person who did it?

Mr. HUBERT. When did you first hear that Oswald had been shot?
Mr. CRAFARD. I had heard that Oswald had been shot Sunday evening.
Mr. HUBERT. Where?
Mr. CRAFARD. It must have been while I was getting through Chicago.
Mr. HUBERT. Where did you hear that?
Mr. CRAFARD. Over the radio.
Mr. HUBERT. What radio?
Mr. CRAFARD. The car radio.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you know that Ruby had done it?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; I didn’t find out who had done it until the following Monday, the following morning, Monday.
Mr. HUBERT. Where did you find that out?
Mr. CRAFARD. I heard that over the radio.
Mr. HUBERT. As a matter of fact, Larry, I suppose all of those cars you were in had radios, didn’t they?
Mr. CRAFARD. A lot of people don’t listen to the radio when they are riding like that. That was the first I’d heard of it—was Sunday evening, the first I heard Oswald had been shot.
Mr. HUBERT. Sunday afternoon, wasn’t it?
Mr. CRAFARD. How is that?
Mr. HUBERT. You said it was while you were working your way through Chicago.
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. Which took you two or three different cars; about 2 hours or so?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. It was in one of those that you heard it?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. There was no announcement that Ruby had done it?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t believe so, because I didn’t know Ruby had done it until Monday morning.
Mr. HUBERT. How did you find that out?
Mr. CRAFARD. I heard that over the news.
Mr. HUBERT. In a car?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. During the night when you were driving from Chicago to Lansing, during the period from 5 in the afternoon to about midnight, didn’t you hear any radio announcements about any of this matter?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. HUBERT. Did that car have a radio in it?
Mr. CRAFARD. I believe so.

Crafard tried to extract himself from that muddle by changing the time he said he was ‘passing’ Chicago to Sunday evening. But in doing so, he created another problem for himself by claiming he didn’t know it was Ruby who shot Oswald until Monday. Clearly, if Crafard had only found out Sunday evening that Oswald was shot, then that news would have also informed him that Ruby did it. After all, Ruby was very well known within the DPD.

I suggest the reason for the inconsistencies and likely deceptions — which Hubert was having problems with — is because Crafard didn’t bypass Chicago in a hitched ride. He was taken to Chicago itself, and he stayed overnight on Sunday. This was more likely a camouflaged getaway. I would also suggest that Crafard was going to meet someone there clandestinely.

Because his story did not add up, Crafard was questioned again in the morning of April 10, and put his time of his arrival in Chicago 20 hours later to late morning Monday 24^th.

Mr. GRIFFIN. On that basis, what time would you say that you arrived in Chicago?
Mr. CRAFARD. It probably would put me in Chicago sometime Monday, about 10:30 or 11 o’clock in the morning.
Mr. GRIFFIN. When you arrived in Chicago, then you knew that Ruby had killed Oswald?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. And what time did you arrive in Lansing, Mich.?
Mr. CRAFARD. I believe it was about 6:30 or 7 o’clock Monday evening.
Mr. GRIFFIN. When you arrived in Chicago did you make any effort to call any of the Rubensteins?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did that occur to you?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; that arrival in Lansing would have been about 3:30 or 4 o’clock. It would have been a couple hours earlier.

Despite the ‘correction’ of 20 hours, his times are still all over the place, and he created no reason to know Oswald was shot without knowing Ruby did it. Griffin was rightly suspicious that Crafard was meeting people in Chicago.

The Man he recognised – with no description

In that session, when Crafard was asked more about the man, he said he recognised him from the State Fair, and who drove him out of Dallas. But he couldn’t say whether he had hair, or was bald, or wore glasses or not.

Mr. GRIFFIN. How old would you say this man was?
Mr. CRAFARD. I would say he was probably in at least his middle forties, more likely in his late forties.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he bald or did he have hair?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t really remember.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he a graying man or what color was his hair?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t remember that either.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember if he wore glasses?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember what kind of a car he owned?
Mr. CRAFARD. I believe he had a Chevy. I am not sure.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How would you describe his physical build, anything remarkable about it?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; not that I could think of.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he a thin man?
Mr. CRAFARD. He was about medium build for a man his age and height.

A question arises as to why Crafard held to the only $7 story, a point of detail that seems, again, improbable. I can only conclude that having little money was essential to the central story he’d hitchhiked, whilst also ruling out the possibility he’d used public transportation. Travel by public transport could invoke a search for witnesses, and would firm up the times.

The lone fish journey does serve a purpose: it distances him from a team effort. From all that I outlined above, it is more likely that Crafard didn’t hitchhike at all. In my view, he was driven to Chicago and then told to lie low with relatives in remote Michigan, with the hitchhiking story as a cover.

Having been asked how Crafard knew the route to Michigan from Dallas without a map, he said he’d done it previously, but then gave an irrelevant answer about a prior hitch to Sacramento and Bakersfield with his wife and two babies. That led to more questions about why Crafard’s wife wanted to take her 2 babies (one his, one by a prior marriage) hitchhiking.

It’s impossible to stitch most things Crafard said to make something sensible out of it. But this was the man who was deceptive about getting to Dallas, the dates when that was, and clung to a dubious story about what he was doing on November 22.

But the Warren Commission Final Report stated:-

“An investigation of Crafard’s unusual behavior confirms that his departure from Dallas was innocent.”

And,

“Although Crafard’s peremptory decision to leave Dallas might be unusual for most persons, such behavior does not appear to have been uncommon for him. His family residence had shifted frequently among California, Michigan, and Oregon. During his 22 years, he had earned his livelihood picking crops, working in carnivals, and taking other odd jobs throughout the country.”

That conclusion avoids the fact that Hubert and Griffin exposed Crafard’s account as being full of bizarre improbabilities that seem like cover stories. Working for the FAA in Nevada is excluded from that summary, as was his regular presence in Dallas.

Whoever drafted those assertions wasn’t reflecting the underlying evidence.

Click here to read part 1.

July 25, 2025

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

Did Ruby employee Larry Crafard impersonate Lee Harvey Oswald in the lead up to the JFK murder? And did the Warren Commission seriously consider this?

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

By John Washburn

This article focuses on Curtis LaVerne “Larry” Crafard. Crafard had worked for Jack Ruby from mid-October 1963 at the Carousel and Vegas clubs. Ruby purportedly recruited him from a fairground.

Crafard said he left Dallas late on the morning of November 23, 1963. This would be Saturday, the day after the assassination. He said he did not take his wages owed. He stated that he hitchhiked 1,175 miles to Clare, Michigan. Crafard’s departure was before Ruby had shot Oswald on Sunday, and hence before Ruby was in the spotlight.

In my prior articles for K&K I postulated that Crafard had a role in the assassination of Kennedy, not as an assassin but impersonating Oswald as part of a frame. An element of that being to act out a fake getaway for Oswald, by getting a downtown bus to Oak Cliff. With Oswald himself having been duped into going to the Texas Theater in a station wagon where he was to be eliminated.

With that, I assumed things went wrong when Tippit, who was supposed to intercept and protect Crafard’s movement once in Oak Cliff, got cold feet and had to be eliminated. Crafard then had to be taken off the bus and then act out an impromptu part at the Tippit murder scene to make it appear Oswald had done it. It was the mishaps around that which meant Oswald was not killed at the Theater.

To examine whether that supposition is supportable, Crafard’s movements need to be addressed over an extended period of time, with particular attention to November 22, 1963 itself.

LEAD I

Crafard was mistaken for Oswald

A Commission memorandum from Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin on March 6, 1964, preparing for interviews in Dallas in April 1964, speculated that Curtis Laverne “Larry” Crafard, an employee of Jack Ruby, was used as a look-alike imposter to set up Oswald as a ‘patsy’. What evidence had accumulated for them to think that impersonation might be an issue?

There had been several reported sightings of Oswald at the Carousel Club in October/November 1963. Hence, indicating a pre-assassination link to the club’s owner, Jack Ruby.

But any mystery about such sightings should have gone away after a memorandum from Naval Intelligence, not released until September 2017, which dealt with what Robert “Bob” Kermit Patterson, 23, ex US Navy, told the Resident Agent “RA” of Naval Intelligence, Dallas at 13:30 hours on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday).

Patterson co-owned Contract Electronics, 2533 Elm St, Dallas, and was taken to the FBI that same day, CE2830. Patterson said that he had seen Ruby with Oswald in his shop about two weeks prior to the 26th.

He said the person had a tattoo on his right forearm, was wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and no jacket, 5’8”-9” tall, 150 lb. He said his colleagues Donald Stuart and Charles Arndt were of the same view. He said Ruby had discussed matters concerning his club and its sound systems. Patterson was shown photographs of six different men and picked out Oswald. Patterson described a 4 by 5-inch notebook and said the names of Stuart and Patterson were added into it by the person on the instruction of Jack Ruby so that Ruby could issue them with passes for the club.

From getting that lead at lunchtime on November 26, the FBI made several visits to the Carousel Club. It took just six hours for the FBI to establish that Crafard was being mistaken for Oswald, and to issue a request that Crafard be traced, interviewed and photographed.

That request appears in an FBI teletype message of November 27, 1963. (The term “DASH VICTIM” in the teletype is code for the killing of Oswald.). A short account of that also appears in “the Taylor Memorandum” of November 27, 1963 (Wednesday), where Rear Admiral Taylor, Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote to Admiral McDonald about the Patterson lead.

A memorandum from CIA officer (later Director) Richard Helms of February 24, 1964 to Hubert and Griffin also said that “Crafard fled Dallas area Saturday. November 23, located in rural parts of Michigan November 28”. (Unpublished WC, Andrew Armstrong file, page 331). ‘Fled’ is not a word to describe someone leaving in normal circumstances.

The FBI traced Crafard to Michigan via his cousin, Gale Cascadden. She lived in rural northern Michigan (her mother was the sister of Crafard’s father). She said to the FBI on December 16, 1963, that he seemed uninterested in the fact that Ruby had shot Oswald. She also said she and her parents did not understand why Crafard had left Dallas. When she asked him why he’d left, she said he changed the subject. (CE 2429).

However, none of that information from Naval Intelligence, nor the teletype, appears in Commission files.

Absent that information from Naval Intelligence, the only route from published Warren Commission records to deduce that Kermit Patterson was the prime lead is to note the similarity between Patterson’s account of November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) in CE2830, and Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday), taken at Bellaire, Michigan CE5226. The photographs taken of Crafard appear as CE 451, 453 to 456.

In that statement, Crafard gave examples of what he did for Ruby, he said:

…on a few occasions during the daytime, he would accompany RUBY around the Dallas area.” “On another occasion, approximately three weeks ago, he went with RUBY when RUBY checked about some sound equipment for the club. This was at an electronics company in about the 2200 or 2300 block of Elm Street. They were there ten or fifteen minutes and did not purchase anything. this occasion he, CRAFARD, was wearing a suit and he feels they were there at about 3:00 PM or 4:00 PM.”

Patterson in Dallas on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) had therefore described a situation which aligned with Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday) in Michigan, and vice versa.

Donald Stuart was interviewed by the FBI on November 27, 1963, and confirmed a similar situation. But he was less certain that the person was Oswald. An FBI record of some of Ruby’s personal effects has passes duly recorded for Donald Stuart, pass number #170, and Robert Patterson #171. Thus, by Tuesday, November 26, 1963, the investigating authorities had information to attach to the mystery of some of the Oswald sightings – including at the Carousel Club.

Mistaken identity, as opposed to false identity, is not uncommon. But what is inexplicable, unless there was something to cover up about Crafard looking like Oswald, is that all other people who came forward afterwards with similar leads were ruthlessly discredited by the Dallas Police and the FBI.

The sightings reported by Litchfield, Kittrell, Crowe, Lawrence, Friedman and Jarnagin

Griffin and Hubert noted in their Memorandum to Rankin of March 6, 1964, that Wilburn Litchfield told the FBI on December 2, 1964 – CE3149 – that in early November 1963, at Ruby’s Carousel Club, he’d seen a man who said he was from California in a V-necked sweater, ‘sloppily dressed’, 5’7”-5’9” who looked like Oswald.

Litchfield had been playing poker on November 24, 1963 (Sunday). He said that he and his associates saw Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, which triggered his memory of seeing Oswald at the Carousel.

Litchfield didn’t say it was Oswald; indeed, he said the person had acne scar pockmarks on the right side of his chin. That doesn’t fit Oswald. But that does match Crafard, who had also been brought up in California. Hubert and Griffin even recognised, in their joint memo of March 6, 1964, that although the DPD tried to discredit Litchfield, the facts stacked up.

“It is also known that an employee of Ruby, Larry Crafard, closely resembles Oswald. Litchfield’s story checks out, moreover in other significant details including the description of a man resembling Alex Gruber of Los Angeles, California who is known to have visited Ruby at the Carousel during the period to which Litchfield refers.”

Litchfield did have a criminal record. Associates of his (CE2889) confirmed what Litchfield said, but the FBI report said that one associate had said Litchfield was a “con man”. But so what, given that his story checked out?

The ‘sloppy’ dress also matches Laura Kittrell’s evidence (see part 3 of my K&K Death of Tippit article). She said that Oswald himself on October 4, 1962 “looked very military as neat as a pin” and was “trim, energetic, compact and well-knitted” but the second person she saw on October 22, 1963 presenting himself as Oswald behaved badly and said he was “a trifling, shirtless, good-for-nothing lout who sprawled oafishly over his chair”. Thus, in her case, that was an active impersonation of someone purporting to be Oswald.

William Crowe was a ventriloquist who did a memory man act with the stage name of ‘Bill DeMar’.

He said he told a newsman he had been at the Carousel Club and saw a man who looked like Oswald, who worked for Ruby at the club. His story broke that day – November 22, 1963 – with the Associated Press agency. He was then interviewed by the FBI in Dallas that same day (page 5 of the Commission file for Crowe).

He said he had performed at the Carousel Club in early November 1963 and asked 20 members of the audience to call the name of an object, so he could then relay them back by memory.

He said that after seeing Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, he went to the Carousel Club within the hour, as he was concerned about his equipment stored there. He said he saw a newsman and a television man also trying to gain access, given the shooting of Oswald.

Thereafter he said he’d been misquoted, and only said the person looked like Oswald. He also said he’d been on stage with lights shining in his eyes. In testifying to the Commission on 2 June 1964, before Hubert, Crowe was shown photographs of Oswald and Crafard. He stated it was a possibility that the man he saw was Crafard.

Crowe was being discredited as late as June 1964 for being an attention seeker wanting to promote his memory act – CE2995.

Even CBS reporter Dan Rather (later to be CBS evening news anchor) got dragged into it. KRLD Dallas on November 24, (Sunday) reported that Rather had seen Oswald at the Carousel Club. The Crowe file, held by the Warren Commission, on page 42 has a note of June 11, 1964, setting out how Dan Rather was interviewed by agents after the KRLD report.

Dan Rather stated that he went to the Carousel Club after Ruby had shot Oswald. He came across Crowe trying to get into the Carousel Club to get his personal effects. Crowe told Rather that he’d seen Oswald there.

Page 50 has the FBI testimony of Pauline Churchill, manager of the Shady Oaks Motel, Dallas, dated June 12, 1964. She confirmed Crowe was staying at the motel and rushed into her office within 15 minutes of Ruby shooting Oswald to tell her it had happened. Dan Rather and Churchill thus vouched for the spontaneity of Crowe. But Rather said (CE3101) that he thought Crowe was making it up.

Waitress Mary Lawrence told the FBI on December 6, 1963, that she had served Oswald and Ruby together at the Lucas B&B café, Downtown Dallas, at around 2:15 am on the morning of the assassination. A few days after, she received an anonymous telephone call “telling her to get out of town or she would die”.

When shown a photograph of Oswald, she said the person she saw had a small scar near his mouth on the right or left-hand side. The FBI Bellaire report states that Crafard had a small scar on his lip. So, Litchfield and Mary Lawrence, rather than trying to make up a story to fit with it being Oswald, did the opposite by describing scarring that Oswald didn’t have.

An internal DPD memorandum and a more comprehensive record described her as a compulsive liar. The police memo was used to discredit her on the basis that Jack Ruby was banned from there and hence could not have been seen there.

But Gloria Fillmon told the FBI on December 17, 1963, CE2379, that she had worked for three weeks in November 1963 as a champagne girl at the Carousel Club. She left because Ruby wanted her to be a stripper. She said a day or two before the assassination, at 3 am, Jack Ruby, Crafard, and she had eaten at Lucas B&B, Ruby and she picking up Crafard on the way. Hence, Ruby likely was not banned. Making that even more probable is that Lucas B&B was at the junction of Oak Lawn and Bowser. It was next to the Vegas Club, Ruby’s other outfit. The neon tower sign is still there.

Crafard’s November 28, 1963, FBI interview (CE5226) states that he worked on the evening of November 21, at the Vegas Club, and went with Jack Ruby to Lucas B&B at 2:30 am on November 22, just as Mary Lawrence said.

If that weren’t enough corroboration. He also said he went there with Ruby and a woman called “Gloria” at around 3:45 am on November 21, just as Gloria Fillmon said. Hence, DPD and the FBI were calling people liars for saying things for which the DPD and the FBI had had parallel evidence to corroborate and had known the cause of since Patterson’s lead of November 26, 1963.

Bob Barrett and James Bookhout of the FBI, on December 26, 1963, followed a lead (CE2991) from the incarcerated Jack Ruby, who said Edward Rocco of Cabaret Magazine, who had been a visitor to the club, could be mistaken for Oswald. Ruby obviously knew Oswald’s appearance, given that he’d shot him from close range in the abdomen.

Rocco was a photographer who had stayed a week in Dallas to take photographs of the Club. Rocco led the FBI to Terry Friedman. Friedman was interviewed by the FBI on July 1, 1964 (CE2991) when he said Rocco had shown him a photograph of the Carousel Club, and Friedman said he thought a person in the front row was Oswald. Out of all of that blossomed numerous photographs of the Carousel Club, included in CE5303.

The Commission did not publish the photographs in another exhibit ‘Exhibit 5212’, but the Mary Ferrell Foundation now has. The reason they were not published was given as their “questionable taste and negligible relevance”. Questionable taste by ’60s standards is correct. Negligible relevance is not. What Exhibit 5212 contains are several photographs showing Larry Crafard, wearing a suit, seated in the front row at the Carousel Club.

Therefore, Ruby’s false lead regarding Rocco being the Oswald look-alike still led to an outcome, the photographer was traced, and the photographs were obtained. Ultimately, Ruby revealed for posterity the photographic proof that it was Crafard who could be mistaken for Oswald. Was Ruby dropping clues deliberately?

LEAD II

An attorney saw ‘Oswald’/Crafard at the Carousel Club on 4 October 1963 discussing a plot to kill Governor Connally.

Carroll Jarnagin was a criminal law attorney; CE2821 is his FBI report of December 6, 1963, the day after he had written a letter to Hoover. He asked to be kept anonymous. That report merely calls him “Witness”.

The report said that on October 4, 1963 (Friday), he’d been using the phone booth at the back of the Carousel Club and overheard Jack Ruby talking to Oswald. The matter being discussed was a contract to kill the Governor of Texas, John Connally. He said he then ended his call to eavesdrop on what else was being said.

Jarnagin had contacted Hoover directly in his letter of December 5, 1963, as he wanted to avoid local press publicity. A good reason for that was that he was an attorney in the criminal justice system and was dating a stripper, Shirley Maudin.

The DPD put him through a polygraph test on March 2, 1964, which he failed, having been taken by Officer Paul Bentley (who had also been at Oswald’s arrest). Bentley was the chief polygraph examiner for the DPD and concluded Jarnagin had made the story up and had been intoxicated at the club. The DPD and Hoover concluded he was an attention seeker.

But that just begs more questions. Why would someone seeking attention end his letter to Hoover asking not to be identified? Why not simply test whether he was yet another person who had actually seen Crafard? Why would someone seeking to raise attention regarding the assassination of the President talk about a plot to kill Connally instead?

People who are intoxicated tend not to remember very much from that time. A tribute piece in a newspaper on his death does say he dedicated his last 14 years to working with Alcoholics Anonymous. Whether he was an alcoholic in 1963 is not known. But alcoholics tend to have a high tolerance of alcohol and don’t necessarily display symptoms of drunkenness.

The FBI file, which has information to discredit him, states that Shirley Maudin, on December 9, 1963, said that he wasn’t drunk. Jarnagin appears to have been treated in the same way that Kittrell, Crowe, Litchfield and Lawrence were.

DA Henry Wade knew Jarnagin personally, and in his Warren Commission testimony of June 8, 1964 (WC Vol V), Wade went out of his way not to discredit him too much and avoided using his name.

Mr. Wade. I didn’t use him as a witness [in the Ruby trial] and after giving him the polygraph I was satisfied that he was imagining it. I think he was sincere, I don’t think he was trying–I don’t think he was trying to be a hero or anything. I think he really thought about it so much I think he thought that it happened, but the polygraph indicated otherwise.

Had Jarnagin attended Ruby’s trial, his evidence would have been discussed in open court. He may also have encountered Crafard himself, who gave evidence in person at that trial as a character witness for Ruby.

In his letter of December 5, 1963, Jarnagin also claimed the man he thought was Oswald was called H. L. Lee. But Oswald was alleged to use the alias of Alek Hiddell, and the alleged room booking at 1026 N Beckley was O. H. Lee.

As my article on that subject for K&K, “Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit wallet”, sets out, there was a Herbert Leon Lee staying at 1026 N Beckley. The FBI, tracking of telephone calls from the telephone box opposite 1026 N Beckley, was in an FBI report (page 23) dated December 9, 1963.

Therefore, rather than embellishing facts gained as an ordinary member of the public after the event, Jarnagin was coming up with accurate information that was not widely known.

Two questions emerge from that. How could Jarnagin, in raising ‘H.L. Lee’ on December 5, 1963, have picked at random the name of someone who was at the very place Oswald had stayed at – 1026 N Beckley? How could Jack Ruby have known on October 4, 1963, that an HL Lee would be associated with 1026 N Beckley? A place that Oswald only moved into on October 14, but whose housekeeper was the sister of Ruby associate Bertha Cheek.

This, from a Dallas Police report, set out more of what Jarnagin said.

“The man who asked to see Jack Ruby is dressed in a tan jacket, has brown hair, needs a haircut, is wearing a sport shirt, and is about 5’ 9” or 10” in height, his general, appearance is somewhat unkempt, and he does not appear to be dressed for night clubbing.”

A tan jacket has come up before. This, from my “Death of Tippit” series of articles, is from Dallas Morning News reporter Jim Ewell. He had arrived at the Tippit murder scene and wrote.

“There was another police car there as they were examining a jacket next to the curb which had apparently been located by one of the policemen after Oswald had thrown it down as he ran toward Jefferson. I had a jacket just like it. I remember it as being a light tan windbreaker. I was with Westbrook as we all went over to examine the jacket because it was the only tangible thing we had at the moment that belonged to the killer. In fact, I held the jacket in my hands. I remember that they were talking about a water mark on it that was obviously made by a dry cleaning shop”.

A post from Education Forum member Gil Jesus shows that the discarded jacket described and presented in monochrome photographs as CE162 as gray, was in fact tan. My Death of Tippit article for K&K also sets out how the evidence submission document, had a strip strategically placed so as to obscure that it was Captain Westbrook who found it. That document also described that tan jacket as gray. Thus, Jarnagin’s detail of a “tan jacket,” matches a jacket found that Captain Westbrook incorrectly reported as gray.

The jacket is by Maurice Holman of California, and Litchfield had said the person he saw was raised in California. The jacket Crafard was wearing when photographed in Michigan also appears similar. Jarnagin also said that the person said he had been hitchhiking. Oswald’s history has no evidence of hitchhiking. Crafard’s story did.

The possibility that Crafard was talking to Ruby about killing Governor Connally appears to have been a step in a very inconvenient direction.

Lead III

Crafard ‘s tall tales about when he arrived in Dallas, and his work after he left the military.

Crafard portrayed himself as an easy come, easy go, itinerant hitchhiker acting as a barker for “How Hollywood Makes Movies” (HHMM), a side show at the October Texas State Fair, Dallas, which ran until it flopped. He then went to work for Jack Ruby at the Carousel Club before leaving on November 23, 1963.

Crafard, in his November 28, FBI interview, said Bob Craven ran HHMM and employed him, and HHMM accounted for him being in Dallas on October 15, living in a tent, and that he stayed with its replacement, a rock and roll show, until approximately October 30, still living in a tent. He said he then moved to work with Ruby on November 1, having first met Ruby on or about October 21. However, Crafard’s story sits alongside conflicting accounts of others regarding the dates involved.

Robert Craven, a co-producer of HHMM, confirmed to the FBI on November 27, 1963 (Wednesday) that the show ran from October 5 to October 15, with the troupe arriving on September 29, presumably for stage set up and rehearsals. CE1534.

The Craven interview makes no mention of Crafard, but the interview was before Crafard was found from the Patterson lead. (Unfortunately, the FBI record is truncated at the end.)

October 4 would be too early for Jarnagin, or anyone, to have seen Crafard as an employee of Ruby at the Club. But Jarnagin didn’t describe an employee, but an unkempt visitor wearing a tan jacket.

HSCA Vol 9-3G page 1093 has a timeline for Jack Ruby. That states the State Fair opened on October 5, and Ruby visited the side show 3-5 times that day. It states HHMM closed on October 15, 1963, and on October 20, the State Fair closed. It also states Crafard was building a cloakroom at the Carousel Club using lumber from the failed HHMM side show that day.

Andrew Armstrong, the barman at the Carousel Club, testified he met Crafard when the HHMM show closed and borrowed equipment was returned to the club by Armstrong and Crafard, Crafard showered at the club and moved in.

An FBI document CE2348 has information regarding Marvin Gardner’s, the show’s electrical technician, interview on November 29, 1963 (Friday).

Gardner said HHMM ran from October 5, 1963, to closure on October 15, 1963. He said the performers and producers left town on the 16^th. He said Crafard was a barker working outside the tent, and when the show folded, Crafard worked outside the tent where a rock and roll show took its place.

Crafard’s true timeline

Crafard, in his first FBI statement on November 28, put his working for HHMM as October 15 rather than October 5. He said he worked for Ruby from November 1, but there is evidence he was actually working at the Carousel from October 16.

With the true timeline, it is possible that what Jarnagin saw on October 4, 1963, was Crafard meeting Ruby, as the fair and show were already in town, both commencing the next day.

Crafard was also deceptive about his activities from when he left the military in November 1959. Crafard testified on 8, 9 and 10 April 1964 in Washington, before Hubert and Griffin. This is from April 8, when he describes his short time in the military.

Mr. CRAFARD. I was in Fort Ord for 2 months and then I went to Presidio, San Francisco, where I was stationed at an air defense school for a period of 2 months and then I was assigned to D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion, San Francisco Defense Organization. From there I went to Germany in April of 1959. I was transferred to Germany to Deisley Kersne, and I was stationed with the D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion there. I stayed there until November of 1959 then I was transferred back to the United States where I was discharged November 10, 1959.
Mr. HUBERT. How long did you serve altogether?
Mr. CRAFARD. Thirteen months

Crafard then described staying with his sister in Michigan for 7 months (which takes things up to July 1960) working casually in pulp wood cutting. He then went to his father’s in Dallas, Oregon, for fruit picking for a month, then a cannery for six months and then, worked with carnivals.

For 1961, he described various fairground jobs, and he extended his account up to 1962, with casual work in California and Dallas, Oregon (as opposed to Dallas, Texas).

But this remarkable question was then posed, which blew that apart.

HUBERT. Now, we have some information that you worked for Federal Aviation Agency through July and October of 1960 in Los Angeles?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes; in Los Angeles–I believe they were out of Los Angeles, where I worked for them that was over in Nevada.
Mr. HUBERT. What kind of work did you do?
Mr. CRAFARD. Surveyor’s assistant. I had forgotten I had worked for them.

Nevada isn’t Oregon. A surveyor’s assistant for the FAA isn’t fruit picking.

Hubert then sprung this on him.

Mr. HUBERT. Do you remember working for the Teer Plating Co., Dallas, Tex.

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes. Let’s see, I believe it was, I am not certain of that.

Mr. HUBERT. That was between April and June of 1961, was it not?

Mr. CRAFARD. I believe so. The way I have traveled around, I had a lot of jobs I even forgot about almost.

Teer Plating was based on Wyche Boulevard in Dallas, between Love Field Airport and Parkland Hospital. The places in Dallas where Kennedy had arrived and then departed from life. Making it all the more strange that Crafard hadn’t remembered that, given the significance of those places on November 22, 1963.

Capping all of that, it wasn’t until Hubert then brought up that Crafard had also been in Dallas, Texas in 1961 working for Ablon Poultry that Crafard revealed that he was married, and had met his wife in Amarillo, Texas, in 1961.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you ever work for Ablon Poultry Co.?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes, sir; that was after I was married.

Mr. HUBERT. That was where?

Mr. CRAFARD. In Dallas, Tex. At that time I was residing at the Letot Trailer Park with my wife and family.

Mr. CRAFARD. I was married June of 1962.

Mr. HUBERT. So your wife lived with you for some time in Dallas, Oreg.?

Mr. CRAFARD. For about 6 months we was living in Dallas, Oreg., from June 10 until I believe in December.

Mr. HUBERT. Where were you married?

Mr. CRAFARD. I was married in Dallas, Oreg.

Mr. HUBERT. Where was your wife from?

Mr. CRAFARD. Originally from Texas.

Mr. HUBERT. Where did you meet her?

Mr. CRAFARD. I met her in Amarillo, Tex.

Mr. HUBERT. When? How long before you married?

Mr. CRAFARD. I believe it was in 1961.

Mr. HUBERT. What part of 1961?

Mr. CRAFARD. In the spring, I believe, it would have been in March of 1961.

Crafard’s approach on each occasion he was caught out is interesting. Rather than doubling down, he gives in. He seems to be confident in knowing he can get away with it.

The HSCA timeline also sets out that Crafard was in Dallas from March 10, 1963, and from March 21 was at Ablon Poultry and Eggs.

Meyer Ablon was interviewed by the FBI on December 20, 1963, and that interview appears as CE1275. Ablon was an associate of Ruby and had also owned the Chateau Nightclub, Dallas. Ablon Poultry and Eggs was on Canton Street at the Farmers Market, 7/10th mile from the Carousel Club.

The story that Crafard was mainly in Oregon after leaving the military was not an accurate one.

LEAD IV

Crafard didn’t hitch to Dallas or arrive with the State Fair. He was driven from Memphis by a staff sergeant of an airbase.

How Crafard got to Dallas in October 1963 also has irregularities

Mr. CRAFARD. I traveled to Dallas, Tex.

Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

Mr. CRAFARD. With a friend of mine, Mickey Spillane.

Mr. HUBERT. Mickey who?

Mr. CRARARD. Mickey Corday.

Mr. HUBERT. How do you spell the last name?

Mr. CRAFARD. C-o-r-d-a-y.

Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

Mr. CRAFARD. Traveled down in his car.

Mr. HUBERT. Where is he from, do you know?

Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t know where his home is.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you know him prior to this time?

Mr. CRAFARD. I had seen him prior to this time and heard of him prior to this time.

Mr. HUBERT. I mean it wasn’t a hitchhike?

Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir; I met him at the fairgrounds in Dallas, Tex., or in Memphis.

Crafard appears to be playing Griffin with the ‘Mickey Spillane’ (a character from detective fiction). Hubert was astute in breaking the hitchhiker narrative. But also, how can Crafard have met the man who took him on a 9-hour drive to Dallas fairgrounds, at the Dallas fairgrounds?

The fair that came to Dallas in late September 1963, opening on October 5, had come from Midway, Texas. But if Crafard was driven from Memphis, TN. Midway is not on the route.

Greg Parker and Mark Groubert writing in an article have identified that a Michael Cordray was a staff sergeant at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth (which is 30 miles from Dallas) and specialized in B-52s and radar systems. The US Air Force had used B-52s in sonic boom tests conducted in Nevada.

Despite his efforts to camouflage his jobs and locations, Crafard’s job history mirrors Oswald’s—low-level positions mixed with roles involving military connections that might require clearance.

Click here to read part 2.

July 23, 2025

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 2

John Washburn concludes his essay on when the police arrived at 1026 Beckley, why they covered up the early time of arrival, and how they knew Oswald was there.

Oswald, Beckley and the Wallet, Part 2

By John Washburn

Would Dallas Police make things up?

There are no leaps of faith here if dishonesty – and worse – in the Dallas police in 1963 isn’t a presumption but a fact.

As late as 1973, DPD Officer Darrell Lee Cain shot 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez while conducting live round Russian roulette on him and his 13-year-old brother in an attempt to force a confession from them.

This piece from Warren Commission apologist David Von Pein assumes that all Dallas Police could be trusted.

“But do people like Jim DiEugenio actually want to believe that the Dallas Police Department, after having found a wallet on 10th Street that some conspiracists think was planted there by either the DPD or somebody else, would have NOT SAID A WORD about finding Oswald’s wallet in any of their police reports?”

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is yes.

There’s a very good reason why a wallet planted prematurely might disappear and be hushed up, i.e., if it messed up the planting of evidence at 1026 N. Beckley by a small clique within the DPD, which had then caused regular officers to search 1026 N. Beckley and find nothing in Oswald’s actual room.

Once the Katzenbach Memorandum was acted upon as a political objective, the DPD, FBI, and all other agencies had not merely carte blanche to cover up but a command to do so. Hence, the post-event pressure on Earlene Roberts. As a result of pressure on FBI agents and the rest of the investigatory establishment.

The Von Pein position is lacking in political context as well as evidence.

Anyone who reads the evidence in the Warren Commission report properly will find discrepancies in timings, obscured events, Freudian slips, over-embellishment of accounts, and stories that lack basic credibility.

Belin, in particular, had a habit of interrupting at the very point someone was saying something that would now be described as “off-message”.

I set out in my Death of Tippit articles at Kennedys and King to show how muddled and full of fancy were the accounts of Sgt. Gerry Hill, Captain William Westbrook, and Reserve Sgt. Croy, as to how they got to the Tippit murder scene, and then the Texas Theater. I show the placing of a strip over an evidence report, which masked that Captain Westbrook had found a ‘gray’ jacket after 1:30 pm, which police radio reported as found around 1:20 pm as a white jacket. Also, Westbrook’s exhibit in monochrome appears gray, but a color version shows tan.

I also set out on K&K to show that the police tapes were altered, including a fake call at 12:45 pm, which covered up the fact that Tippit had been at the Gloco filling station.

Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade stated this to the Commission, Volume V, regarding Captain Fritz, the head of homicide for the DPD.

“I don’t know what the relations-the relations are better between Curry and Fritz than between Hanson and Fritz, who was his predecessor. But Fritz runs a kind of a one-man operation there where nobody else knows what he is doing. Even me, for instance, he is reluctant to tell me, either, but I don’t mean that disparagingly. I will say Captain Fritz is about as good a man at solving a crime as I ever saw, to find out who did it but he is poorest in the getting evidence that I know, and I am more interested in getting evidence, and there is where our major conflict comes in.”

There’s another term for ‘solving’ crime without sufficient evidence. It’s called fitting people up. Particularly serious in a state with the death penalty.

The searches, and full or not full

Officers, at that stage, looking for someone on the run, having shot a police officer and discarding an Eisenhower jacket whilst running away would have information and incentive to search any room occupied by any young man who could fit that description, which is just what Arthur Johnson described (Vol. 10, p. 305).

Mr. Belin. Well, let me backtrack a minute, now. How soon after you got home did the police come—approximately?

Mr. Johnson. I’d say within 30 minutes.

Mr. Belin. All right. 30 minutes after you got home, the police came. And what did the police say to you?

Mr. Johnson. They asked if—uh—we had anyone by that name living there.

Mr. Belin. By the name of Lee Harvey Oswald?

Mr. Johnson. Yes.

Mr. Belin. And what did you tell them?

Mr. Johnson. We told them, “No.”

Mr. Belin. All right. And then what did they say?

Mr. Johnson. Well, they wanted to see the rooms. They had described his age, his build, and so forth, and we had two more boys rooming there. Uh—and my wife was going to let them see the rooms.

Mr. Belin. Your wife was going to let them see the rooms that you had—and you had a total of 17 roomers, I believe you said?

Mr. Johnson. Well, no. I don’t know just how many roomers we had. We have 17 bedrooms—but I don’t know just, at that time, how many roomers we had.

But, anyway, we had a couple of boys around his age that had moved in just a few days before, and, so, she was going to let them see their rooms.

There is clearly a sensitivity about his wife letting them see the rooms. Which I assume is provoked by the warrant issue. There was also another distraction and a leading question from Belin, stating, “You had 17 roomers”. That was misrepresenting what Arthur Johnson had earlier (page 302) stated: that they hadn’t been fully booked in the last six months.

BELIN. About how many people do you have that room there?
Mr. JOHNSON. Well, when it’s full, we have 17.
Mr. BELIN. Has it been full within the past 6 months at all, or not?
Mr. JOHNSON. No, no, it hasn’t
Mr. BELIN. By the way, how long have you been married, Mr. Johnson?
Mr. JOHNSON. Seventeen years.
Mr. BELIN. You’ve been married 17 years?

Gladys Johnson said it hadn’t been full in October 1964. Arthur did with the above, emphatically. “No, no. It hasn’t”. Belin changed the subject by asking inanely how long the Johnsons had been married, as if he were a chat show host.

But Belin also made a logical error regarding the math. If the official line was correct, for the place to be full, if “Room 0” was taken, then there would have been 18 roomers. That isn’t merely full, it’s overfull. Oswald would then come back when one had moved out, making it overfull again. Neither of the Johnsons testified fully, let alone overfully.

Having said what he said above, Arthur Johnson then indicated the searches had already progressed.

Mr. Belin. All right. And then what happened?

Mr. Johnson. Well, I saw his picture on television and I hollered at them and told them. They were out in the back, started around the house to the—uh—basement where these boys room. The bedrooms are all in the basement. And they were going back there.

And—uh—I just called them and told them, I said, “Why, it’s this fellow that lives in here.”

Mr. Belin. You told them that you had seen the picture of this man on television?

If I am correct in my assumption that the lack of a warrant was used as a lever to make up a story, then this exchange is evidence of it. Johnson seems to be describing a search of the rear annex as well as the basement. If officers in hot pursuit arrived even as late as 2:00 pm, then police arriving at 3:00 pm after the arrest of Oswald wouldn’t have hampered the search, which started over an hour earlier.

Note, Belin also made yet another inane interjection, repeating what Johnson had said, rather than challenging what Johnson was saying.

Earlene Roberts, in this exchange, revealed more irregularities in several ways.

Mr. BALL. After he left the house and at sometime later in the afternoon, these police officers came out, did they?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, yes.

Mr. BALL. And they asked you if there was a man named Lee Oswald there?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes.

Mr. BALL. And you told them “No”?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes.

Mr. BALL. Then what happened after that?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, he was trying to make us understand that—I had two new men and they told me-Mrs. Johnson told me, “Go get your keys and let them see in” I had gone to the back and they still had the TV on, and they was broadcasting about Kennedy.

Just as I unlocked the doors Fritz’ men, two of them had walked in and she come running in and said, “Oh, Roberts, come here quick. This is this fellow Lee in this little room next to yours,” and they flashed him on television, is how come us to know. Mr. BALL. Then you knew it was the man?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes; and I come in there and she said, “Wait,” and then again they flashed him back on and I said, “Yes, that’s him-that’s O. H. Lee right here in this room.” And it was just a little wall there between him and I.

Mr. BALL. That was the first you knew who it was?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes, because he was registered as O. H. Lee.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever know he had a gun in his room?

Mrs. ROBERTS. No; I sure did not.

The line “Go get your keys and let them see in.” with “as I unlocked the doors”, goes entirely against the line Room 0 was only of interest only after Fritz’s officers arrived at 3:00 pm and only accessed with a warrant after 4:30 pm.

But she also revealed there were the officers who first arrived, asking for Lee Oswald, then ‘two new men’ with the unlocking of doors, and then the Fritz men, who were Potts and Senkel, arriving at 3:00 pm.

But if the police did turn up looking for Lee Harvey Oswald and she really did have a current guest called Mr. OH Lee, and there was already a description of a young man who looked like him it wouldn’t take a TV appearance much later for “oh it’s O.H. Lee”, to trigger the connection with Room 0, the small room next to hers without a lock.

But that is just what Potts described.

Mr. POTTS. 1026 North Beckley.
Mr. BALL. What happened when you got there?
Mr. POTTS. We got there and we talked to this Mrs.–I believe her name was Johnson.
Mr. BALL Mrs. A. C. Johnson?
Mr. POTTS. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Roberts.
Mr. BALL. Earlene Roberts?
Mr. POTTS. Yes; and they didn’t know a Lee Harvey Oswald or an Alex Hidell either one and they couldn’t–they just didn’t have any idea who we were talking about, so the television–it is a rooming house, and there was a television—-
Mr. BALL. Did you check their registration books?
Mr. POTTS. Yes, sir; we looked at the registration book–Senkel, I think, or Cunningham–well, we all looked through the registration book and there wasn’t anyone by that name, and the television was on in the living room. There’s an area there where the roomers sit, I guess it’s the living quarters–it flashed Oswald’s picture on there and one of the women, either Mrs. Roberts or Mrs. Johnson said, “That’s the man that lives here. That’s Mr. Lee—O.H. Lee.” She said, “His room is right here right off of the living room.”
Senkel or Cunningham, one of them, called the office and they said that Turner was en route with a search warrant and we waited there until 4:30 or 5 that afternoon. We got out there about 3.
Mr. BALL. You waited there in the home?
Mr. POTTS. We waited there in the living quarters.
Mr. BALL. You did not go into the small room that had been rented by Lee?
Mr. POTTS. No; we didn’t–we didn’t search the room at all until we got the warrant.
Mr. BALL. Who brought the warrant out?
Mr. POTTS. Judge David Johnston.

It’s one thing for one detective not to spot “Lee” if he was in the register, as OH Lee, or Lee Harvey Oswald, but for all three detectives to miss it as well? It doesn’t end there.

Arthur Johnson testified he’d spotted Oswald on TV. But Potts testified he was there when “one of the women” spotted Oswald on TV. Roberts testified “she” (Mrs. Johnson) saw Oswald on TV whilst Roberts was “unlocking doors” with police officers.

There is a pattern of indicating doors were almost unlocked and almost opened. Any belief in the story that they were watching TV at 1026 N. Beckley for the “oh, it’s OH Lee” moment also has to contend with this memo from Hubert and Griffin of March 6, 1964, to Rankin.

“Her [Earlene Roberts’] failure to notify the police of Oswald’s residence at the N. Beckley address. (Mrs. Johnson apparently called the police from a different address immediately upon seeing Oswald’s picture on TV but Roberts who was watching TV at the N. Beckley address, did not).”

With that, the TV part of the story collapses as well.

When was the OH Lee name made up? If so, when?

None of the attending parties on 22 November 1963, with the warrant at 4:30 pm, referred to OH Lee.

The testimony of Fay Turner, Vol VII, taken at 2:30 pm on April 3, 1964, made no mention of OH Lee. He actually referred, as did Earlene Roberts in her 5 December 1963 affidavit, to Lee Oswald.

Mr. TURNER. Well, Detective Moore was in the office. He and I got a car and drove down by the, back down to the sheriff’s office, and when we got there, Judge Johnston and one of the assistant district attorneys, Bill Alexander, was standing on the front steps waiting for us, because someone got ahold of him by phone and told them I was on the way.
Mr. BELIN. Was that Detective H.M. Moore?
Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir.
Me r. BELIN. Then what did you do?
Mr. TURNER. We went on over, the four of us–me, Detective Moore, Judge Johnston, and Mr. Alexander–went over to 1026 North Beckley where this Lee Oswald had a room in it.
Mr. BELIN. You went over there on November 22?
Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir.

Turner not only failed to refer to OH Lee, but he also used the emphasis “this Lee Oswald”. By 3 April 1964, Oswald was known globally as Lee Harvey Oswald.

Belin seems to have picked up on that slip and responded with yet another irrelevant change of the subject. It’s plainly obvious Turner is talking about the day of the assassination. Furthermore, Fay Turner was accompanied to 1026 by Officer Henry Moore; his testimony, Vol. VII, taken at 11:00 a.m. on April 3, 1964, again made no mention of OH Lee.

The same goes for the Judge, David L Johnson, who arrived at 1026 with Turner, Moore and Deputy DA Bill Alexander. He made no mention of OH Lee when he testified on 26 June 1964, Volume XV. It would be a highly relevant point of law to search the room of someone registered under a different name from that on the warrant. Alexander did not testify.

Earlene Roberts didn’t use the term OH Lee in her December 5, 1963, FBI affidavit. The comprehensive index of names which appear in FBI statements has hundreds of references, but the only reference to ‘OH’ Lee is for her statement. But in that affidavit, she said she took the reservation. In her Commission testimony, she had said Roberts did it. The affidavit makes no reference to any of the events at 1026 on 22 November.

Arthur Johnson is listed in the Earlene Roberts file, in a memorandum from Norman Redlich as making an FBI report to Agent “Gamberling” (Gemberling) on 30 November 1963, which refers to OH Lee., But that record seems to be missing. The Redlich memorandum refers to Arthur Johnson telling the FBI on seeing Oswald on TV, which runs counter to Warren Commission testimonies and the reports of police officers Potts and Senkel–which omit the FBI–only referring to Johnson telling the police at 1026.

So, by Monday, 25 November 1963, the name OH Lee had only appeared in the incident reports of Potts and Senkel and the FBI statement of Gladys Johnson.

The Potts and Senkel statements are far from contemporaneous. They are undated, are typed as one document and refer to Ruby shooting Oswald. That dates them to late 24 November at the earliest.

The Dallas Morning News made no mention of OH Lee on November 22, 23, or 24. Things stayed that way until April 1, 1964, when parties came to testify. By which time Roberts and Arthur Johnson had used it, and Gladys Johnson brought the slip but not the register, having changed her story about who had taken the booking.

Was Oswald even using an alias at 1026?

There are two possibilities. Oswald was registered at 1026 in his real name, or he was not.

To me, the best indication that he did use his own name is the fact that the name in the planted wallet was Lee Harvey Oswald. Then there is what I have set out above, which includes the phone call to Gladys Johnson from her daughter as Oswald was being arrested.

The only other evidence for an alias is Ruth Paine saying she called 1026 and asked for Lee Harvey Oswald, and they didn’t know who he was. But why give her the phone number if he was there under a false name? His daughter was born on 20 October 1963 whilst he was living there. A good reason to be contactable.

Why would the name OH Lee be made up? That’s simple, it would create a cover story for why those officers who first attended had not looked in the right place the first time around.

A benefit of pretending Oswald was using the name OH Lee is that it also creates smog, given that there was an unconnected Herbert Lee who had moved out. It seems to have confused Gladys Johnson when she testified. In short, there are no consistent accounts of who saw what and when, and who said what to whom. The only consistency is the irregularity.

Why did Earlene Roberts leave overnight?

The Warren Commission file makes clear that Griffin and Hubert not only didn’t believe Roberts but saw her as a potential conspirator. The result of the March 6, 1964, memorandum was that her testimony was delayed. It was meant to be April 1, 1964, the same day as the Johnsons.

Roberts disappeared from her employment at 1026 in the middle of the night, according to the testimony of Gladys Johnson. She put that departure as Saturday, 6 March, which is interestingly the same day as the Griffin and Hubert meeting and memorandum. That delay seems to have been covered by a pretext – in Gladys Johnson’s testimony – that she didn’t reply to the Commission request to attend as the Johnsons didn’t know where to send it.

To set Oswald up, with a visit by an imposter whilst he was already at or on the way to the Texas Theater by Rambler, and to enable evidence planting would need minor complicity from one person at 1026. Two extra keys. Is that what Earlene Roberts did for her sister, Bertha Cheek, as a favor for Jack Ruby? Neither woman would need to know what it was for.

For all the pressure put on Earlene Roberts, one fact seems to relieve her of any guilt. She revealed, by 29 November 1963 (Friday), what appears in this DPD note: she saw car 207 and heard it toot at the time the man she thought was Oswald was in the house. She said she was certain, as she knew the officers who used car 170 and wanted to check whether it was them. She had been a PBX telephone operator, a job that requires fast acting and a facility with numbers.

Who were the officers who first attended and searched Oswald’s room?

By exclusion, from my prior articles, it couldn’t have been any of the parties at the Texas Theater for the arrest of Oswald. That rules out Hutson and Baggett, who I believe were clean, plus Hawkins, McDonald, CT Walker, Westbrook or Hill. It would rationally be officers at the Tippit murder scene.

According to my prior articles, corrupted officers from the Tippit murder scene, bar Croy, are accounted for in the group at the Texas Theater, and corrupt officers would know that searching the room pre-emptively was a problem. Croy’s behavior cannot be explained from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm. He said he drove one block from the Texas Theater at the time of Oswald’s arrest there. Was it his job to plant evidence in Oswald’s room, only to find that other police had already searched it?

According to Bill Simpich, Croy got the wallet from an unknown person, gave it to Sgt. Owens, gave it to Westbrook, who showed it to Agent Barrett. After the wallet was videotaped, it went back to Westbrook’s custody.

Officer Poe, who appears entirely regular in his behavior and statements, not least as he is relevant to the proof that Jerry Hill was lying (below), also said he was at the Texas Theater.

That leaves Officer Jez, his partner. This article on K&K by Jack Myers states.

“Before his death, Dallas Police Sergeant Leonard Jez was asked to comment on the presence of Oswald’s wallet at 10^th & Patton. Jez had been one of several officers officially present at 10^th & Patton, and whom Lt. Croy could not recall. Jez verified the existence of the wallet at the murder scene, he had seen it with his own eyes.

“Don’t let anybody bamboozle you,” stated Jez flatly. “That was Oswald’s wallet.” “

I note Warren Commission apologist Dale Myers has said he did not believe Jez. But I am more concerned with Myers not commenting that it is Sgt. Hill, Captain Westbrook and Sgt. Croy, who are not believable.

By DPD patrol radio, Jez and Poe arrived first at the Tippit murder scene. Then, inside a minute of that, Officer Owens arrived, who said he carried Westbrook and Deputy DA Bill Alexander. But Jerry Hill said he arrived with Owens and was talking to witnesses when he saw Poe’s car pull up. An impossibility if Hill had arrived with Owens.

I note Dale Myers was given access to particular DPD officers in his work to prove Oswald killed Tippit. But I find considerable overlap between those Officers with gross inconsistencies in their accounts and those he interviewed. Thus, Myers seems to dismiss other officers’ accounts, whilst not dealing with the many problems with those he was given access to.

My personal conclusion is that Hill arrived in the same car 207 he’d left City Hall in to arrive at the Tippit murder scene, having delivered a decoy for the ambush of Tippit, via 1026 N Beckley. Thus, it was the decoy Roberts saw at 1:00 pm, not Oswald. Westbrook took car 207 back to the depository and then arrived again with Stringer and reporter Jim Ewell. Westbrook then made pointless patrol radio calls around 1:30 pm, which served to indicate he’d only then arrived. However that is betrayed by the fact – which he went to great lengths to cover up – that Westbrook discovered the fugitive’s jacket just before 1:20pm, called out on the radio by another officer.

Further, this DPD record of June 1964 states “his records further indicated that Patrolman JM Valentine was the sole occupant of car Number 207 on November 22, 1963”. But that’s demonstrably false. By the account of reporter Jim Ewell, he arrived at the Depository building with Valentine and Hill. TV footage shows Hill getting out of that car with “207” on its door.

A small clique of Officers, perhaps complicit in the impromptu murder of Tippit, would obviously have a position to protect. Officer Jez would not.

Click here to read part 1.

June 18, 2025

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 1

John Washburn explores the evidence that the authorities knew who Oswald was and that he was at the Beckley Street rooming house way before the official story says they knew it. In addition, they were there much earlier also.

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 1

By John Washburn

Some researchers have suggested Lee Harvey Oswald did not live at 1026 N Beckley, the rooming house owned by Arthur and Gladys Johnson, with a live-in housekeeper, Earlene Roberts. Roberts is the sister of Bertha Cheek, a business associate of Jack Ruby.

I have enumerated a quantity of false testimony and falsified documents in my prior articles for this site. And with no presentation to the Warren Commission of the guest register for 1026, I find that not an unreasonable position. The only paper evidence presented of his residing there is this slip of paper presented as an Exhibit with the name “OH Lee” and the words “OUT” and “Room 0”. However, I set out here why I believe Oswald was living at 1026 N Beckley, but not in Room 0.

In doing that, I set out the necessity for a story being manufactured, whilst the components of that story do not match the facts. Something which recurs in the Kennedy and Tippit cases. All that is needed to establish that the official line was untrue is a careful read of Warren Commission testimonies and affidavits.

“Room 0”

Room 0 was a minuscule room off the TV room of 1026 N. Beckley. Designed to be a closet-library with sliding doors and no locks. It had a bed in it because the housekeeper used it for her grandchildren if they came to stay.

The normal rooms at 1026, numbered 1-17, were located in an annex over a garage, two on the first floor by the living quarters, and the rest in a basement. The place is now a registered monument.

The official line was that Oswald:

was staying in “Room 0” from 14 October 1963 until 22 November because the place had been full when he was looking for a room.
was using the name “OH Lee”

And the police said they:

didn’t arrive at 1026 until 3:00 pm, 22 November, after Oswald was arrested and held at City Hall
needed a picture of Oswald to appear on TV after 3:00 pm for the connection with “OH Lee” to be made, and thence Room 0
didn’t search any rooms in 1026 other than Room 0

The search is the only part of the account that is true. Room 0 wasn’t searched until after 4:30, as a warrant was obtained, which was attended by a judge, the deputy DA Bill Alexander, and Detectives Turner and Moore.

The “OH Lee” paper slip – no register – and not full

There was a guest register for 1026, as owner Gladys Johnson said so in testifying on 1 April 1964. Volume X.

Mr. BALL. How many tenants did you have in October last year?
Mrs. JOHNSON. You know, I’m sorry I didn’t bring my register. I couldn’t tell you exactly; I imagine I had about 10 or 12.
Mr. BALL. Was it full?
Mrs. JOHNSON. No; I don’t–I most always have vacancies.
Mr. BALL. You do?
Mrs. JOHNSON. I have had more even since this happened.

With that, she destroyed the line that Oswald had to take the room he took because all of the 17 normal rooms were taken.

This is the exchange from the point she handed over the slip with OH Lee on it.

Mr. Ball. We will make a picture of this and give it back to you.

Mrs. Johnson. May I have something to erase this November 13, 15—I got that wrong, anyway. I was looking at the calendar and this, I was thinking it was November 13 that he left—he left my place on a Wednesday before this assassination on Friday.

Mr. Ball. That was the last time you saw him?

Mrs. Johnson. Yeah; the last time I saw him was on a Wednesday but my housekeeper seen him on a Friday morning right after this assassination, he came by the house hurriedly.

Something else is amiss. She said, “he left – he left my place”, but Ball in his follow-up replaces the definite proposition that he’d checked out, with the possibility she merely didn’t see him.

Gladys had another document with her, which she first offered to erase, and she then referred to dates that don’t appear anywhere on the O H Lee slip. Or anywhere else in her testimony.

She appears to be backtracking, having let another cat out of the bag. She was referring to someone who checked out on Wednesday, 13 November 1963, not someone she last saw on Wednesday, 20 November. The only thing keeping her testimony on track is Ball helping it along.

On the Education Forum, Bill Simpich has adduced evidence that there was a guest, Mr Herbert Leon Lee. That is supported by the FBI tracing calls made from the payphone at the gas station opposite 1026 to the Lee household in Shreveport. He appears to have been a genuine person (b 1941, d 2009). The FBI records show calls were made before Oswald moved in.

Different room – searched too soon?

I propose that Oswald did live at 1026 N Beckley, and Herbert Lee was an unconnected person who moved out on November 13, 1963. However, I propose that neither Oswald, Herbert Lee, nor anyone else was using Room 0.

I conclude the story of Room 0 had to be made up because Oswald’s actual room had been searched by regular officers very soon after Officer Tippit was shot, but nothing was found in it. Because the evidence intended to be planted in Oswald’s room – communist literature and a gun holster – hadn’t been planted by then. If all guest rooms were already searched, there would only be one solution: to pretend he’d been in the only place not searched.

That may seem a bizarre thing to say 60 years on. But no more bizarre than proposing that an ex-Marine, in his early 20’s was living in a minuscule room (1/3 of the size of the ones for rent), with sliding doors and no locks, opening into communal areas, with a connecting door to the bedroom of the 58 year old housekeeper Earlene Roberts. Now hidden by a curtain.

As for Oswald: He was supposed to be of low intelligence on the one hand, whilst on the other had managed to learn fluent Russian from a Russian guide. It’s that account that is preposterous.

That story gets worse with the additional excuse that when normal rooms did become available, he decided to stay in it regardless.

timbush1 1

In CE2830, Floyd DeGraffenreid – a resident at 1026 – said he only saw Oswald no more than 4-5 times and mainly in the TV room. But if Oswald was in that small room, he would be conspicuous every time he was in and out. The small room is little more than a closet of the TV room.

The time problem – masking the first searches

The official line was that the register was examined for the name Lee Harvey Oswald, but the room was not searched until after 4:30 pm. And only then because Oswald’s face had appeared on TV, because he was using the false name OH Lee. But OH Lee is merely the converse of LeeHO. It wouldn’t be difficult to make the connection with only 10 or so guests: Face on TV or no face on TV.

Any police turning up with 1) a description of the person of interest running from the Tippit murder scene, and 2) the name Lee Harvey Oswald, would have at least two rooms of immediate interest, Oswald’s as well as recent guest Herbert Lee. But it is clear from various testimonies that the first round of police arrived much earlier than 3:00 pm, closer to 1:45 pm. That was before Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theater at 1:50 pm, arriving at City Hall after 2:00 pm.

The earlier police came as a result of the shooting of Officer Tippit. This is from the testimony of Arthur Carl Johnson, Gladys Johnson’s husband, taken on 1 April 1964:

Mr. BELIN. Could you describe how you came to find out that this man had another name other than O. H. Lee?
Mr. JOHNSON. Well, it was when the officers came looking for him.
Mr. BELIN. When was this?
Mr. JOHNSON. Uh–after Tippit was shot, the police—-
Mr. BELIN. This would have been on November 22, 1963.
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.

Belin–with that interruption by stating the obvious–was changing the subject, stopping what else was going to come out.

But the time of day does emerge from what followed. Note the CBS radio announcement at approximately 1:25 pm of Kennedy’s death was earlier than the television announcement of approximately 1:35 pm (CST). The earlier radio time can be verified because BBC TV London was ahead of US television, getting the news out live at 7:27 pm GMT (1:27 pm CST) as it monitored live radio transmissions globally.

Mr. BELIN. He [a person Downtown] had heard over the radio that the President had been shot?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. And then, did you turn on your radio?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. We don’t have one there in the place, so we went out in the car and sat there in the car and listened.
Mr. BELIN. All right. And was it while you were sitting in the car that you heard that the President had died?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; we didn’t leave until we–it was announced that he was dead.
Mr. BELIN. How soon after that announcement did you leave?
Mr. JOHNSON. I’d say 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. All right. Then, how long did it take you to get to 1026 North Beckley?
Mr. JOHNSON. It takes us about 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. So that about 10 minutes after you heard on the radio that the President had been shot, you arrived with your wife at 1026 North Beckley?

And Gladys Johnson said:

“So I came from the restaurant, I guess 1 or 1:30, and these officers were there 1:30 or 2, something like that, anyway, it was after this assassination, and as I drove in, well, the officers were there and they told me that they was looking for this character and I told them I didn’t think I had anyone by that name there but we went through the register carefully two or three times and there was no Oswald there and I had two new tenants, rather new tenants, so we had carried them around the house to show them and we was going to start in the new tenants’ rooms and my husband was sitting in the living room and seen this picture flash on the television and he said, “Please go around that house and tell him it was this guy that lived in this room here” and it was O. H. Lee.

Earlene Roberts, in her 5 December 1963 affidavit for the FBI, said this:

“Oswald went out the front door. A moment later I looked out the window. I saw Lee Oswald standing on the curb at the bus stop just to the right, and on the same side of the street as our house. I just glanced out the window that once.

“I don’t know how long Lee Oswald stood at the curb nor did I see which direction he went when he left there.

“About thirty minutes later three Dallas policemen came to the house looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. We didn’t know who Lee Harvey Oswald was until sometime later his picture was flashed on television. I then let the Dallas policemen in the room occupied by Lee Oswald. While the Dallas police were searching the room two FBI agents came in.”

By that, the Dallas police arrived around 1:35 pm, and were asking for Lee Harvey Oswald, a person she refers to as “Lee Oswald”. She made no mention of OH Lee. The room was searched, and the FBI was there too. There is no mention of the judge or the DA with the warrant (which occurred around three hours later), and warrants are not needed in cases of hot pursuit.

There is then her Warren Commission testimony, Vol. VI.

Mr. BALL. Can you tell me what time it was approximately that Oswald came in?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Now, it must have been around 1 o’clock, or maybe a little after, because it was after President Kennedy had been shot-what time I wouldn’t want to say because…
Mr. BALL. How long did he stay in the room?
Mr. ROBERTS. Oh, maybe not over 3 or 4 minutes-just long enough, I guess, to go in there and get a jacket and put it on and he went out zipping it.
Mr. BALL. You recall he went out zipping it-was he running or walking?
Mrs. ROBERTS. He was walking fast-he was making tracks pretty fast.
Mr. BALL. Did he say anything to you as he went out?
Mrs. ROBERTS. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Did you say anything to him?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Probably wouldn’t have gotten no answer.

Johnson again:

BELIN. Had this man, O. H. Lee, was he there when you got there?
Mr. JOHNSON. No; he had been there–just–uh–before we got home.
Mr. BELIN. Did Mrs. Roberts tell you that he had?
Mr. JOHNSON. She told us that he come in and got a–uh–little coat or something and just walked in his room and right back out the door.

All of that is a significant departure from the official line that the police arrived at 3:00 pm.

The disappearing wallet at the Tippit murder scene

The thing that needs to be factored in, which can explain these anomalies, is the discovery of a wallet that can be seen in WFAA footage of the Tippit murder scene. This footage, the “Reiland film”, shows the wallet being examined with Sgt. Croy and Captain Westbrook present.

The Reiland footage was shot between 1:30 pm and 1:45 pm at the latest. In my Death of Tippit article, I put the coverage of the wallet as shown in the film as around 1:35 pm. Since it was before Westbrook headed to the Texas Theatre for the arrest of Oswald, but after the TV crew had been filming searches on East Jefferson just before 1:30 pm.

The drive from the Tippit murder scene to 1026 would be around 3 minutes.

If that wallet contained the 1026 Beckley address, and the name “Lee Harvey Oswald”, then conscientious officers could and should have headed there in less than 5 minutes of it being ‘found’.

The police at the Tippit murder scene not only had the description of someone who looked like Oswald running from that scene, but a person similar to that had been seen by Earlene Roberts entering and leaving 1026 around 1:00 pm. Added to which, the person running from the Tippit murder scene ditched a jacket, and Roberts had seen the man she described as Lee Oswald putting one on.

It wouldn’t need a photograph on television at some point after 3:00 pm to hone in on possible people of interest at 1026. There were 17 rooms and only 10 or so guests.

The wallet disappeared from the police record and only reappeared publicly when people spotted it in the Reiland footage in the 1990s.

What went wrong

I believe the wallet is essential to understanding what really went on at 1026 in the afternoon of 22 November 1963.

If that wallet was planted prematurely – meaning it was planted in an improvised rush to set Oswald up for the impromptu killing of Tippit at 410 E. 10th – then the disastrous consequences of that would then require unpicking.

That disaster was a search of Oswald’s actual room, by regular police officers in hot pursuit from 410 E 10^th, where nothing unusual was found. Likewise, other rooms.

By that scenario, conspirators and complicit elements of the Dallas Police would be so far down the road of setting up Oswald as a patsy that they had to have him living there with the incriminating evidence.

That would require a clean-up operation,

covering up that regular officers had been there,
the control of 1026 by ‘irregular’ officers so that items could appear in Room 0, the only room not searched,
creating a fictional reason why Oswald was in Room 0,
creating a reason why it took so long to identify Oswald being in Room 0 (the OH Lee false name invention),
delaying the search of Room 0 until it could be searched with something to find,
creating a story/pretext to coerce Earlene Roberts and the Johnsons into an alternative account.

False lead

Warren Commission Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin did not believe the Dallas Police sent by Captain Fritz (see incident reports of attending officers W.E. Potts and B. L. Senkel) could have arrived at 1026 at 3:00 pm, having been sent from City Hall at 2:40 pm, after Oswald’s arrest, without some form of prior knowledge.

That was because the official story was that the lead to 1026 N Beckley did not come from Oswald. It occurred after the Dallas City police and Dallas County Sheriff (jurisdiction over the County of Dallas as well as the City of Dallas) had arrived at the Oswalds’ lodgings at Ruth Paine’s house in Irving after 3:30 pm. Ruth Paine said she only had a telephone number for Oswald.

The police and sheriffs then used the telephone company to trace the address.

Ruth Paine also made the odd statement, “I was expecting you,” when the police and sheriffs arrived. When asked why she expected them, she said that Lee Oswald had worked at the scene of the shooting. (Testimony of Officer Guy Rose (8 April 1964).

But his name hadn’t been released, nor had a photograph. She had been watching TV. It is unlikely that Oswald’s face had appeared on her TV by then. What the Commission missed–and unfortunately, Hubert and Griffin did not interview Roberts and the Johnsons–is that the doubtful reason for Potts and Senkel arriving at 3:00 was not the only irregularity. And in fact, Gladys Johnson had told her daughter prior to 2:00 PM that the FBI and Dallas Police had already been at Beckley looking for Oswald. (Sara Peterson and K. W. Zachry, The Lone Star Speaks, p. 175)

Warrants

Oswald was still alive until Sunday, November 24th. From the perspective of the Johnsons and Roberts on late Friday, 22 November, he would face trial. And they all would believe Oswald did it.

I propose that complicit police officers could use a technical argument to get those people to go along with the fiction that Oswald was in Room 0. Because it was the only one that hadn’t been searched without a warrant.

Warrants are not required when police are in hot pursuit. Warrants are required for searches after a suspect is arrested. That distinction wouldn’t be known by many members of the public.

This – invented by me – phrase might work as simple pressure with a bit of guilt, too.

“We have a problem. Mrs Johnson and Mrs Roberts in giving access without a search warrant have prejudiced the evidence we did find in Mr.Oswald’s room. We therefore need to say we found it in the small room, which wasn’t searched, until after we had obtained a proper warrant. A minor technicality. We will also need to say we didn’t look in that room because he was using the name OH Lee. By the way we must not mention we searched any other rooms as we didn’t have a warrant.”

There was clearly something wrong with what the Johnsons and Roberts were saying. They weren’t very good at lying. Understandable if they were being fed a story to tell without all of the reasoning behind it.

Roberts was clearly getting pressure from all directions.

Mr. BALL. Why to your sorrows?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, he was registered as O. H. Lee and I come to find out he was Oswald and I wish I had never known it.

Mr. BALL. Why?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, they put me through the third degree.

Mr. BALL. Who did?

Mrs. ROBERTS. The FBI, Secret Service, Mr. Will Fritz’ men [Dallas Homicide] and Bill Decker’s [County Sheriff].

As well as pressure on her from at least four agencies, her answer seems to have a Freudian slip.

Wish she’d not known what? Everyone knew Kennedy and Tippit were killed. Worrying about what name Oswald used when he registered in the overall scheme of things is trivial.

Surely the sorrow and hassle were from him being there for six weeks, having supposedly murdered the President and a police officer.

Unless there wasn’t a false name, but she was pressured to go along with it as an invention.

But in her 5 December 1963 affidavit for the FBI, she didn’t show any anxiety about the name OH Lee, as she didn’t even refer to it. She indicated she knew him as Lee Oswald, but refers to the police looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. Not using one’s middle name is not using a false name.

Why was the guest register never presented as evidence? I suggest that it is obvious. Not only would it show that 1026 hadn’t been full. It would show Lee Oswald registered in his own name.

From examination of testimonies, there are so many areas of sensitivity, time inconsistency, over-embellishment, non-sequiturs and Freudian slips in the testimonies of Roberts, Arthur and Gladys Johnson, that everything about the official story falls over.

The “OH Lee” alias is now an established part of the Oswald as a lone shooter narrative. But the Dallas Morning News of 23, 24, and 25 November 1963 makes no mention of it.

That suggests that the story didn’t need to exist publicly until after the Katzenbach Memorandum of 25 November 1963, which gave the covert objective of the Warren Commission as,

“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”

The rest of this article examines, in the light of the above, just how badly the official line plays out in testimonies taken by Counsel Belin and Ball.

A particular issue is whether rooms were opened or not with keys – relevant to the warrant matter. But alas, Room 0 doesn’t have a lock. The library it was designed to be didn’t need one.

(Part 2 coming soon)

Click here to read part 2.

June 17, 2025

District	Officer/s	Reason for leaving district
21	D.P. Tucker and C.R. Graham	TSBD
22	LL Hill	TSBD
23	BE Barnes	Parkland

70s to 90s	Lt. Fulgham	Out of State
70s	Sgt. CB Owens*	TSBD
71-75	Wise, Cox and Sebastian	Allocated bike duties
76	HH Horn	TSBD
77	WE Smith	TSBD
78	JD Tippit	In 108 and 91
79	BW Anglin	TSBD
80s & 90s	Sgt. HF Davis	Open question
81-82	JL Angell	In 91
83-84	RL Gross	Went to Trade Mart
85-86	RW Walker	Remained
87	RC Nelson	In 108
88-89	Not known	Not known
91-92	WD Mentzel	In 91
93-94	HM Ashcraft	TSBD
95-96	MN McDonald/TR Gregory	TSBD
97-98	Not known	Not known
108-109	OH Ludwig	Allocated to guard hotel

Author: John Washburn

The Depleted Patrols in Dallas on November 22, 1963

How Did Oswald Get the Wrong Bus Transfer? – Part 2

How Did Oswald Get the Wrong Bus Transfer? – Part 1

Will Fritz’s Freudian slip: Why was a bus transfer for the number 23 Lakewood Line found on Oswald if he’d been on a number 30 Marsalis Line bus?

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

By John Washburn

LEAD V

Crafard’s alibi for November 22

LEAD VI

Crafard and the police badge

LEAD VII

The incredible journey. How did Crafard get to Michigan?

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

By John Washburn

Crafard was mistaken for Oswald

An attorney saw ‘Oswald’/Crafard at the Carousel Club on 4 October 1963 discussing a plot to kill Governor Connally.

Crafard ‘s tall tales about when he arrived in Dallas, and his work after he left the military.

Crafard didn’t hitch to Dallas or arrive with the State Fair. He was driven from Memphis by a staff sergeant of an airbase.

Oswald, Beckley and the Wallet, Part 2

By John Washburn

Would Dallas Police make things up?

The searches, and full or not full

When was the OH Lee name made up? If so, when?

Was Oswald even using an alias at 1026?

Why did Earlene Roberts leave overnight?

Who were the officers who first attended and searched Oswald’s room?

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 1

By John Washburn

“Room 0”

The “OH Lee” paper slip – no register – and not full

Different room – searched too soon?

The time problem – masking the first searches

The disappearing wallet at the Tippit murder scene

What went wrong

False lead

Warrants