Reclaiming History (26 page)

The gunman spots Mrs. Markham across the street and looks straight at her. She thinks he’s fixing to kill her too. She falls to her knees and covers her face with her hands, but when she pulls them down enough to see, she realizes that he is veering off, cutting across the yard of the corner house.
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Barbara and Virginia Davis are babysitting when they hear the shots. The young women (nineteen and sixteen, respectively) have been sisters-in-law for a couple of months, ever since they married brothers. Their husbands are in the home-repair business, and the two couples each live in an apartment in the corner house at Tenth and Patton. Barbara slips on her shoes and rushes to the screen door, Virginia on her heels. She sees Mrs. Markham across the street on the corner, screaming and pointing toward the man coming across her yard, “He killed him! He killed him!” Barbara glances to her right and sees a Dallas police car parked in front of the house next door. The gunman is now less than twenty-five feet away as he cuts across her front walk. He looks at her coolly as he shakes spent cartridges from an open revolver into his hand. She dashes to the phone and calls the police.
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Scoggins has been driving a cab for less than two years, but if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s to get as far away from the cab as possible when trouble starts. He doesn’t fancy being commandeered by some nut with a gun. Scoggins is already getting out when he sees the gunman cutting across the yard of the house on the corner, and realizes he’d better get out of sight, fast. He starts to cross the street, but there’s no time to run and hide. He quickly crouches down behind the cab, then steals a look as the man runs through the bushes of the corner house. Scoggins can see the side of the man’s face as the killer looks back over his shoulder and mutters, “Poor damn cop,” twice. Or maybe it was “poor dumb cop.” Scoggins isn’t sure.
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1:13 p.m.

Ted Callaway is in his office, a small clapboard building at the back of Dootch Motors, the used-car lot on the northeast corner of Jefferson and Patton, when he hears five shots. The office boys with him laugh about the “firecrackers,” but the forty-seven-year-old Callaway, knowing instantly what it is, says, “Firecrackers, hell! That’s pistol shots!”
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The used-car manager is a Marine Corps veteran who fought on the Marshall Islands during World War II, and later trained recruits during the Korean War. He’s on his feet in a flash, running out to Patton Street. He looks to his right, up toward Tenth and the sound of the shots. He can see the cabdriver Scoggins crouched down next to his taxi as a man leaps through the bushes and cuts across Patton, running toward him. The fleeing man has both of his hands on a pistol he holds straight up, elbow high—what the Marines call a “raised pistol position.” As the gunman gets kitty-corner across the street—less than sixty feet away—Callaway hollers to him, “Hey, man, what the hell is going on?”

The killer slows, almost stops, says something unintelligible, shrugs his shoulders, and walks briskly on toward Jefferson Boulevard, then turns right and proceeds in a westerly direction down Jefferson.
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Callaway turns to B. D. Searcy, a car-lot porter, and tells him, “Keep an eye on that guy, follow him. I’m going to go down there and see what’s going on!”

He takes off on the double, a good hard run.

“Follow him, hell,” Searcy calls after him. “That man will kill you. He has a gun.” Searcy proceeds to find refuge behind the office building.
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Warren Reynolds is standing on the balcony of the two-story office building at his brother’s used-car lot—Reynolds Motor Company—across Jefferson Boulevard from Dootch Motors. Three men are on the lot below him—Harold Russell, L. J. Lewis, and B. M. “Pat” Patterson. They all heard the shots and now see a man running down Patton toward them. As he nears the corner, they can see he is reloading a pistol, which he promptly tucks into his belt. As he heads west on Jefferson, Reynolds descends the stairs and tells the others that he’s going to trail the guy. Patterson goes with him, Lewis runs back to the office to phone police, and Russell trots down toward the scene of the shooting.
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On Tenth Street, when the killer is about half a block away, Mrs. Markham runs over to the policeman’s body to see if she can help. The gurgling sounds coming from Tippit’s body lead Markham to think he may be trying to say something. But it’s only death gasps. Markham screams in despair, “Somebody help me!” but she is all by herself, and no one responds to her pleas for what seems to her like several “minutes.”
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Frank Cimino, who lives at 405 East Tenth Street, directly across the street from the shooting, had been listening to his radio at the time he heard “four loud noises that sounded like shots,” after which he heard a woman scream. He puts on his shoes, runs outside, and sees a woman dressed like a waitress (Markham) shouting, “Call the police.” She tells him the man who shot the police officer had run west on Tenth Street and pointed in the direction of an alley between Tenth and Jefferson off Patton, but he sees no one when he looks in that direction. Cimino approaches the officer, who is lying on his side with his head in front of the left front headlight of the police car. Cimino can see that Tippit has been shot in the head. Tippit’s gun is out of his holster, lying by his side. Tippit moves slightly and groans but never says anything that Cimino can understand. Soon people start coming from all directions toward the police car.
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1:15 p.m.

Benavides has been sitting in his truck for two or three minutes, very afraid that the gunman lives in the corner house and might come back shooting. He finally gets out, walks across the street, and cautiously approaches the fallen officer. A big clot of blood bulges at the officer’s right temple, his eyes sunken into his skull. It makes Benavides feel sick, and “really” scared.
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1:16 p.m.

The mechanic gets into the squad car, grabs the microphone, and tries to call the police dispatcher. Unfortunately, Benavides has no idea how the radio works. He fumbles with the controls and keeps clicking the button on the mike, but from the chatter on the police radio he can tell they can’t hear him.
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A small crowd has gathered at the squad car by the time Ted Callaway gets there, closely followed by Sam Guinyard, a porter at Dootch Motors, who had been waxing and polishing a station wagon at the back of the lot when he saw the gunman run by. More people from the neighborhood are arriving every minute.
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Callaway kneels down next to the body. He doesn’t have to look very hard to see the officer has been hit at least three times, once in the right temple. Callaway had seen a lot of dead men during the Korean War. This officer looks just like them.
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I
n New York, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite tells the nation for the first time that the president has reportedly died. Calling it “only a rumor,” he leads to Eddie Barker, the news director of CBS’s Dallas affiliate KRLD, who is on the scene at Parkland Hospital. Barker says, “The word we have is that President Kennedy is dead. This we do not know for a fact…The word we have is from a doctor on the staff of Parkland Hospital who says that it is true. He was in tears when he told me just a moment ago. This is still not officially confirmed, but…the source would normally be a good one.”
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1:17 p.m.

T. F. Bowley, who just picked up his twelve-year-old daughter at the R.L. Thornton school in Singing Hills and was on his way to pick up his wife from work at the telephone company at Ninth and Zangs, drives up on the scene at Tenth and Patton. Bowley tells his young daughter to wait in the car as he walks over to see what’s happened. He takes one look at the officer and knows there is nothing anyone can do for him. He walks over to the open driver’s door of the squad car. Benavides looks up and says, “I don’t know how it works.”
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Benavides gets out of the car and hands the mike over to Bowley, who calls in the shooting, “Hello, police operator?”

“Go ahead,” dispatcher Murray Jackson answers. “Go ahead, citizen using the police—”

“We’ve had a shooting out here,” Bowley blurts out.

“Where’s it at?” Jackson asks.

Bowley hesitates. He isn’t sure.

“The citizen using police radio—” Jackson continues.

“On Tenth Street,” Bowley cuts in.

“What location on Tenth Street?”

“Between Marsalis and Beckley,” Bowley answers. “It’s a police officer. Somebody shot him—what—what’s this?” Someone at the scene tells Bowley the address and he repeats it to the dispatcher, “404 Tenth Street.”
*

Jackson knows his friend, Officer J. D. Tippit, is in that general area and immediately calls over the police radio, “[Unit] 78?”

Bowley says, “You got that? It’s in a police car.” Someone at the scene tells him the number of the police car. Bowley repeats it: “Number ten.”

Now Jackson knows. That’s Tippit’s squad car number. In fact, he and J. D. had once partnered in that same car. He can’t believe what appears to have happened. He doesn’t want to believe it. Both he and the other dispatcher working channel 1, C. E. Hulse, shout into their mikes, “Seventy-eight.”

Seconds tick by. No response. It can’t be true, Jackson thinks. But it is.

“You got this?” Bowley asks the stunned dispatcher.

Hulse takes command, “Attention all units—”

“Hello, police operator? Did you get that?” Bowley asks, talking over the dispatcher.

“—Signal 19 [police call number for a shooting] involving a police officer, 510 East Jefferson.”
*

“The citizen using the police radio, remain off the air now,” Jackson orders, as he recovers from the shocking news.

“[Unit] 91?” Hulse calls, trying to contact Patrolman W. D. Mentzell, who checked out a few minutes earlier at a traffic accident near the Tippit shooting scene. No response.

“[Unit] 69’s going out there,” Patrolman A. R. Brock calls in to Jackson.

“Ten-Four, 69,” Jackson replies, relieved to know that help is on the way.
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It isn’t long before law officers throughout the city learn that one of their own has been shot. First, it was the president. Now, for the Dallas police, it’s personal.

O
n the street in front of the Texas School Book Depository Building, Sergeant Gerald Hill had run into Lieutenant J. C. “Carl” Day of the crime lab, just as he arrived at the scene. Hill told him about finding spent cartridges up on the sixth floor, and Day had gone on up. Now, Hill is giving Inspector Sawyer the same information, as
Dallas Morning News
reporters James Ewell and Hugh Aynesworth stand nearby, listening intently to the conversation. Hill, a former newsman, knows how tough it is to gather facts without good police sources. He speaks clearly so the newsmen get it right.

Sergeant C. B. “Bud” Owens and Assistant District Attorney Bill Alexander join the group. In a moment, Sheriff Bill Decker walks up. He’s grimfaced. Decker was in the lead car of the motorcade and had seen the carnage at Parkland Hospital. But all he says is, “It looks bad.”
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They are all standing there but a moment when they hear T. F. Bowley’s voice break in on a nearby police radio with the news that a Dallas police officer has been shot.

Sergeant Owens, acting lieutenant in charge of the Oak Cliff area, listens with growing horror to the dispatcher calling in vain for Unit 78. He knows immediately that it’s one of his men, J. D. Tippit—a longtime friend.
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Owens jumps into his car as Hill and Alexander pile in behind him. Owens puts the pedal to the floor and the car squeals away toward Oak Cliff.
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Hill grabs the radio in the front seat: “Give me the correct address on the shooting.”

“501 East Tenth,” dispatcher Jackson replies, giving an address from another call sheet just handed to him from an officer who had received this address from a telephone operator who in turn had been given the address by a resident calling in from East Tenth Street. The police are being flooded with call sheets—notations that record telephone calls from citizens.

Patrolmen Joe Poe and Leonard Jez, also racing to the scene, are equally confused by the multiple addresses.

“Was 519 East Jefferson correct?” Poe asks.

“We have two locations, 501 East Jefferson and 501 East Tenth,” Jackson says, not mentioning the correct address of 404 East Tenth Street (Tenth and Patton) that he had also been given. “[Unit] Nineteen [Owens], are you en route?”

“Ten-four,” an unknown officer says, “nineteen is en route.”
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At 1:18 p.m., the channel 2 dispatcher, Gerald D. Henslee, informs “all squads” of the correct address of the shooting.
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B
ack in front of the Depository, reporters Ewell and Aynesworth confer briefly. The shooting in Oak Cliff
has
to be connected to the president’s death, they think. They decide to split up—one will stay at the Depository and the other will go out to Oak Cliff. Aynesworth draws the Oak Cliff assignment. After he runs off, Ewell has second thoughts about staying behind. He spots Captain W. R. Westbrook, in charge of the Dallas Police Department’s Personnel Bureau, running for his car. He’s headed for Oak Cliff too. Ewell asks permission and joins him.
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A
t Tenth and Patton streets, ambulance attendants J. C. Butler and William “Eddie” Kinsley swing their 1962 Ford ambulance around in front of the squad car and jump out. (Though they had received the incorrect address of 501 East Tenth Street from the police, they had no trouble spotting the squad car, and people around it, less than a block to the east.) They’ve been dispatched from the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home, less than three blocks away, but there’s nothing they can do for Tippit. Ambulance attendants at that time are basically just drivers whose job is to get victims to a nearby hospital as quickly as possible. Their ambulance is equipped with little more than a stretcher.