J.D. Tippit

J.D. Tippet was a Dallas police officer who got a radio call shortly after noon on November 22, 1963 to be on the lookout for a white male of about 30; 5’10” tall approx. 150 lbs., named Lee Harvey Oswald.  When he saw a 24-year old white man who was 5’9” and weighed 150 lbs., he stopped to investigate.  When Tippit stepped out of his car, that man drew a pistol and shot him three times in the chest.  As Tippit lay on the pavement bleeding, the man walked over to him and fired a forth shot directly into his right temple.  J.D. Tippet left a wife and three children.

In less than half an hour later, Dallas police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald in a movie theater, which Oswald had entered without buying a ticket.  Oswald had drawn a 38 caliber pistol and almost certainly would have shot another policeman, but he was overpowered and disarmed.  By the evening of the 22^nd, five different witnesses had identified Oswald as being a man they’d seen by the crime scene in possession of a pistol (only one of them had actually seen the shooting).  By the next day there were five additional witnesses. Speaking as a defense attorney, I would have not envied the task of any lawyer tasked with defending Oswald on the charge of murdering officer Tippet.  I am not prepared to argue with JFK conspiracy theorists on every bit of Dallas minutia, but I fail to see how any reasonable person can doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was a cop-killer and almost certainly a presidential assassin as well.