This Is Not America
184
F. THE KILLING OF JD TIPPIT On the morning of the assassination, Jefferson Davis Tippit told his family he would get them a new car and other things ‘soon’. Even though he was quite often rough with his family, that morning, he kissed all of them goodbye. His son told a friend that his “dad seemed awfully nervous”. Tippit had had an affair with a waitress at Austin’s Barbecue, where Tippit moonlighted as a security guard. She had become pregnant, probably by him, but had nevertheless reconciled with her ex-husband. This man had been following his wife and her lover, Tippit, during their affair around the Oak Cliff area on their nightly escapades. Some believe Tippit was killed as a result of this affair. A retired D.P.D. officer believed “it would look like hell for Tippit to have been murdered and have it look like he was screwing around with this woman... somebody had to change the tape (insert a Dispatcher’s command that accounted for Tippit’s presence in that neighborhood-P.C.)... somebody had to go to the property room and change those (cartridge) hulls and put some of Oswald’s hulls in there ... ” At 13h03, Tippit failed to respond to a call. W.R. Stark and Louis Cortinas, working in Top 10 Record Shop, said Tippit was using the phone inside their shop at that time. Tippit let the phone ring seven or eight times, hung up and walked away. About ten minutes later, they heard the news of Tippit’s killing. Wes Wise, a reporter for KRLD-TV in Dallas, saw that a car, license plate PP 4537, was parked near the scene of the crime. The owner of this car, Carl Mather, lived in Garland, Texas. An auto mechanic, T.F. White, said that his 1957 Plymouth four-door was red. The FBI, however, said the car they searched for was light or medium blue. Domingo Benavides, said that a red car was parked in front of him when Tippit was killed. Benavides, however, thought it might have been a Ford, a red 1961 Falcon. Mather, interestingly, was a good friend of Tippit. When interviewed, Mrs. Mather said her husband had worked all day at Collins Radio Company, until 14h00, when he had come home and had gone over to the Tippits. Mrs. Mather, who was interviewed twice, said they never had a red car. Strangely, Carl Mather was never interviewed. A car was parked on the parking-lot of the El Chico Restaurant. At around 14h00, a man who strongly resembled Oswald (but couldn’t have been because he was arrested at that time) sat in that car, until he suddenly left at high speed going west on Davis Street. Five witnesses stated they had seen Tippit sitting in his car at a service station in the area. After about ten minutes, he drove off at a high rate of speed. Kay Coleman, a stripper for Jack Ruby, was having an affair with Harry Olsen, a D.P.D. officer and friend of Tippit, who was off duty on November 22. Coleman, when asked to give an alibi for the time of the murder, could not furnish one. Her friend Olsen said he was guarding an estate at East 8th Street, Oak Cliff, just one block away from the murder scene. Unfortunately for Olsen’s alibi, there was no such estate. Nevertheless, he did learn of Tippit’s murder. Olsen himself claimed he had access to the house phone and thus heard the news, which seems rather Impossible as there was no house there. On December 7, Olsen crashed into a phone pole, hospitalizing him for two weeks. Afterwards he was either fired by Curry or was asked to resign “- or resigned himself, without any given