Roger Craig in 1974

Introduction

According to the Warren Report, in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was murdered by a 24-year old ex-Marine and communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald. Per the report, Oswald, firing from the 6^th floor, southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository, using a World War II vintage, bolt-action, Italian made 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, got off 3 shots, two of which hit the President, once in the back and once in the head, fatally wounding him. The Report goes on to state that the wound to JFK’s back exited from his throat and then struck Texas Governor John Connally (riding in the jump seat in front of Kennedy) in the back. This remarkable bullet, the report says, then sped downward from Connally’s collarbone and exited the right side of his chest, in the process shattering a rib bone and puncturing his lung; then slammed into the Governor’s right wrist, shattering more bone. On exiting the wrist, the talented missile finally lodged itself in Connally’s left leg just above the knee. Despite its tortured route and impacts, this “magic” bullet was found later that afternoon in nearly pristine condition on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital, where it presumably came to rest after falling out of Connally’s leg. This is the official narrative of JFK’s assassination, as relayed to us by the Warren Report, published in September of 1964, roughly 10 months after Kennedy was killed. On that fateful Friday, JFK was shot at 12:30 PM central time as his motorcade passed through the section of downtown Dallas called Dealey Plaza. As the Report notes, Oswald was arrested shortly before 2 PM, initially for murdering Dallas police officer JD Tippit[1], an event which, per the Report, took place at 1:16 PM; but it wasn’t until 1:30 AM the following morning that Oswald was formally charged with murdering the President. Less than two days later, while being transferred to a different jail, Lee Harvey Oswald was himself shot and killed by a Dallas night club owner named Jack Ruby. Ruby’s murder of Oswald took place in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters with dozens of police officers about while being broadcast live on national TV. With millions of witnesses seeing him shoot the accused assassin, there is no question of Ruby’s guilt. The real question is why did he do it. Regarding the possibility of others being involved in either killing, the Warren Report concludes there is “no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy . . .” As we have already seen in the first installment of this series, which tells the story of Ed Hoffman, a man who with his own eyes saw a rifleman on the grassy knoll shooting at the President, that statement by the Warren Commission is false. (by definition, in a criminal case eyewitness testimony does constitute “evidence”) There were many more witnesses besides Hoffman in Dealey Plaza that day (51 of them state they thought they heard shots coming from the grassy knoll,) and in this installment of this series we’ll examine the eyewitness account of another, Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, who was present and on duty that tragic day in Dallas. As you’ll see, Deputy Sheriff Craig is an amazing witness, and what he reports about his experiences that day further contradicts the Warren Report’s “no evidence of a conspiracy” statement. Told largely in Craig’s own words, here is his story.

(Much of the information in this post is taken from the book “The Deputy Interviews” by Steve Cameron, linked here:)

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“I believe in my country. I have done nothing but tell the truth, and I will continue to do so.”

Roger Craig

Dealey Plaza

On November 22, 1963, Roger Craig was a 27-year old Dallas County Deputy Sheriff. At the age of 17 he was drafted into the military and sent to Korea for a 13-month tour of duty. On leaving the military he returned to Dallas, and in October of 1959 he became a Dallas County Deputy Sheriff. An excellent police officer, Craig was named the Sheriff’s Department Officer of the Year in 1960, and by 1963 had established himself in the Department and was looking forward to a long career in law enforcement. For Craig, however, all of that would change on that unfortunate Friday in November.

As Roger Craig describes it, in 1963 the attitudes of many in the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department towards JFK could at best be described as bitter. From the Sheriff of Dallas County, a man named Bill Decker, on down, it was common to hear criticisms of Kennedy’s handling of incidents like the Bay of Pigs or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even the fact that he was Catholic. This animosity extended right into the day of Kennedy’s motorcade through downtown Dallas, when, as they were waiting for the procession to pass by, Craig heard one of his fellow officers mutter prophetically, “Maybe someone will shoot the son of a bitch.”

In 1963 the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office was located at 505 Main Street, just a short distance from where Main Street intersects Houston Street, which forms the eastern border of Dealey Plaza. Travel a few hundred feet further north on Houston and you’ll come to the now infamous Elm Street and the even more infamous Texas School Book Depository. At 10:30 on the morning of Friday, November 22, Sheriff Decker called his deputies into his office and informed them that in a couple of hours JFK’s motorcade would be passing down Main Street and take a hard right on Houston, followed by a harder left on Elm, on its way to Stemmons Freeway and the Dallas Trade Mart, where the President was to give a luncheon speech. According to Craig, he then ordered that, “…we were to stand out in front and in no way take part in the security of that motorcade, that we were merely spectators and nothing more.”

As he stood out in front of the Sheriff’s Office on Main Street awaiting the arrival of the motorcade, Deputy Sheriff Craig had ample reason to question his boss’s order. Already aware of the hostility expressed by his fellow officers, as he stood there waiting, something else was troubling him, which he describes in his own account of what happened that day: “…being a trained officer, I always looked for anything which might be amiss about any situation with which I was confronted. Suddenly I knew what was wrong. There were no officers guarding the intersections or controlling the crowd. My mind flashed back to the meeting in Decker’s office that morning, then back to the lack of security in this area…” In a separate interview Craig comments further: “…It did (seem unusual) to me at the time, because there were so many people around and so few Dallas police officers. This is one of the first things I noticed, was the lack of Dallas police officers. To keep the people back…”

As the motorcade approached, Craig’s concerns were fleetingly eased when he caught a glance of a happy President Kennedy in the back seat of his topless limousine, smiling and waving at the crowd. The limousine passed where Craig was standing and, as he was watching the following cars in the motorcade, made the right turn to Houston. Just a few seconds later, Roger Craig’s worst fears were realized: “The President came by and they made the right turn onto Houston Street, and a few seconds later…I heard what I call a report—a gun shot—and I turned and started toward Houston Street running as hard as I could, and I was probably 15 steps from Houston Street, and before I reached those 15 steps I heard two more reports.”

Craig continued to run down Houston Street and seconds later arrived at Elm Street. He describes what happened next: “…there was a Dallas Police officer running up the grassy knoll to the picket fence, so I immediately assumed—the motorcade had left by then—and I immediately assumed that he knew something about the shots, or he wouldn’t have been headed toward the picket fence. So, I followed him.”

As yet unaware that Kennedy had been hit, Craig relates that, “…people were mentioning the President was shot, and someone else said a secret service agent was shot, and there were just stories flying all over, but my interest was to get behind that picket fence, because that’s where that Dallas police officer was headed. I looked in that area for probably 7-8 minutes maybe, something like that, until I ran onto Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Rowland.[2] Now, Mr. Rowland told me that 15 minutes before the motorcade arrived he saw two men on the 6^th floor of the School Book Depository. One was a white male in the east corner of the 6^th floor, with a rifle. The other one was a colored male, at the west end of the 6^th floor, pacing back and forth…I went to the south side of Elm Street, to look for any signs of any bullets striking the curb or the street, or anything. By this time it had been established that the President had been shot. And…Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers[3] joined me at that time…Everybody was coming to the scene of the shooting, which is normal…people are just that way. But, as I was searching the south curb of Elm Street, I heard a shrill whistle, and I looked up—it just drew my attention; it was coming from across the street, and there was a light green Rambler station wagon, driving real slow, left on Elm Street, and the driver was leaning over to his right, looking up, at a man running down the grass. So, I immediately tried to cross the street to take these two people into custody for questioning… Everybody else was coming to the scene—these were the only two people leaving, and this was suspicious in my mind at the time, so I wanted to talk to them, but I couldn’t get across the street…the traffic was so heavy I couldn’t get across the street to them. But I did get a good look at the man coming down the grassy knoll. And he got into the station wagon and drove west on Elm Street.”

The “Magic Rifle”

By this time it was about 12:40 PM, 10 minutes after Kennedy was shot. Craig, thinking that the incident of the two men leaving Dealey Plaza in the station wagon was important enough to bring to the attention of his seniors, ran toward a temporary command post that had been set up at the corner of Elm and Houston, in front of the Book Depository building. When he got there he met a man who identified himself as Secret Service. Craig describes this man as being well-dressed in a gray business suit, about 40 years old, sandy haired with a distinct cleft in his chin. He gave his information to this Secret Service man, who showed little interest in the men leaving Dealey Plaza, but a lot more interest in the description of the Rambler station wagon—it was the only part of Craig’s story that the Secret Service man wrote down. Later it would trouble the young Deputy Sheriff, who was normally so thorough, that in the hecticness of the moment he didn’t get the Secret Service man’s name. According to the Secret Service, all agents on duty that day travelled with the President’s motorcade to Parkland Hospital, leaving Craig (and us) to wonder: just who was the “Secret Service” man he met in front of the Book Depository?

At the moment he had no time to think about it, as seconds after his encounter with the mysterious “Secret Service” man, Craig’s boss, Sheriff Bill Decker,[4] appeared and ordered him to help the Dallas police search the Book Depository building, which Craig immediately set about doing.     

It was during his search of the Book Depository that Roger Craig participated in the discovery of the sniper’s nest, spent shells and a rifle, hidden on the building’s 6^th Floor, an event he describes as follows: “It had been determined that the shots came from the southeast window (of the Book Depository), how I don’t know, the Dallas Police were saying this, so we immediately went there…Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney was with me when we found the shells—we found three hulls, beside the window on the 6^th floor. They were lying 3 in a row, 3 spent cartridges, not more than an inch apart, all pointing in the same direction…of course I didn’t touch them, they hadn’t photographed or finger printed or anything. And there was a lunch sack, very small, brown paper lunch sack up there, had some chicken bones in it. And there was a soda bottle sitting on a box…”

Of course, shells ejected from a bolt action rifle after firing would fall randomly and not in the fashion observed by Craig on the 6^th floor: “… lying 3 in a row, 3 spent cartridges, not more than an inch apart, all pointing in the same direction…”

After finding the shell hulls the officers continued the search, which Craig also describes: “…We began then to search for a weapon…everybody took a different direction, and deputy sheriff (Eugene) Boone and myself just happened to head for the northwest corner of the building. Boone was ahead of me by about 8 feet; there was a stack of boxes just at the head of the stairwell going downstairs. Boone looked over into it and said ‘here it is…here’s the rifle.’  So, I immediately went over beside him and looked over, and there was a rifle. But we didn’t touch it until Captain Fritz and Lt Day from the ID Department of the Dallas Police Department got there. Now, Captain Fritz was chief of Homicide and Lieutenant Day was from the Identification Bureau. They got there and took some pictures of the rifle, and then, I believe, Day pulled the rifle out and handed it to Captain Fritz, who held it up by the, it had a strap on it, he held it up by the strap, and asked if anyone knew what kind of rifle it was. Well, by this time Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman had joined us, and Weitzman was a gun buff; he had a sporting goods store at one time, he was very good with weapons. He said it looked like a Mauser, and he walked over to Fritz. Captain Fritz was holding the rifle up in the air, and I was standing next to Weitzman, who was standing next to Fritz, and we weren’t any more than 6 or 8 inches from the rifle, and stamped right on the barrel of the rifle was ‘7.65 Mauser.’ And that’s when Weitzman said ‘it is a Mauser,’ and pointed to the ‘7.65 Mauser’ stamp on the rifle.”

It’s important to note at this point that the ejected shell hulls Craig and Mooney discovered on the 6^th floor were stated by Craig to be “from a 6.5 Italian rifle” and not a Mauser. Later, Weitzman would make a notarized statement, an image of which I’ve included in this post, verifying that the rifle discovered by Boone and seen by Craig and the others was, indeed, a 7.65 Mauser. In addition, using the Freedom of Information Act, in the mid-1970’s assassination researcher Mark Lane[5] acquired documents from the CIA, dated 23 and 28 November, 1963, that corroborate Craig’s data that the discovered rifle was a Mauser. The documents further note that stating the rifle was a Mannlicher-Carcano was an error.  I’ll leave it for you to ruminate on what all this could possibly mean.

JD Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald

To that point on this shocking day, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig had witnessed a lot, but there was one more major event in store for him. Shortly after the discovery of the rifle on the 6^th floor, Craig says a Dallas police officer came running up the stairs and informed Capt. Fritz that a Dallas policeman had been shot in the Oak Cliff area, about 2.5 miles southwest of Dealey Plaza. On hearing this, Craig instinctively looked at his watch and noted the time as 1:06 PM. Now, if you’re familiar with the JFK assassination data, you’ll know that the murdered policeman was JD Tippit. Craig’s noting of the time (1:06 PM) of this news is significant, as it means that Tippit must have been killed before that. This is corroborated by the fact that the Dallas police dispatcher tried to call Tippit at 1:04 PM and could not reach him. Across the next few minutes he tried 3 more times, all to no avail, most likely because the unfortunate police officer was in the process of being killed or was already dead. It is also corroborated by a witness to the Tippit killing, Helen Markham, who placed the time at 1:06 PM. In addition, the doctor at Methodist Hospital pronounced Tippit dead, according to hospital records, at 1:15 PM, which means that, to allow time for the ambulance to arrive at the murder site, load Tippet’s body and then drive to the hospital, he must have been shot minutes before that. Despite this evidence, since another witness, Domingo Benevides, reported Tippit’s murder on the police officer’s car radio at 1:16 PM, the Warren Commission concluded that is when the murder happened, a full 10 minutes after Capt. Fritz, Roger Craig and the others on the 6^th floor were informed. But even Benevides acknowledges that after seeing Tippit being shot he sat in his car for several minutes before getting out, running to Tippit’s cruiser and using the radio to report the shooting. Put it all together and it’s pretty obvious Officer Tippit was killed at closer to 1:06 PM than 1:16 PM, yet the Warren Report still states 1:16 PM. Why? [6]

30 to 40 minutes after Benevides reported Tippit’s death, a suspect in the police officer’s murder was arrested and taken into custody. On hearing this, and suspecting a possible connection between Tippit’s shooting and the man he saw running down the grassy knoll and leaving Dealey Plaza in the Rambler, Craig called Captain Fritz and gave him a description of the man. Fritz responded, “It sounds like the suspect we have in custody. Come on up and take a look at him.”

By then it was late in the afternoon. Roger Craig got into his unmarked car and drove to City Hall to meet with Fritz and see the suspect. When he got there, Craig says he “went directly to Captain Fritz’s office…the man (the suspect) was sitting in a chair behind a desk. There was another gentleman, I assumed he was one of Fritz’s people, because he had the white cowboy hat on, which was the trademark at that time of the Dallas homicide bureau. Fritz turned to me and said, ‘Is this the man you saw?’

“And I said, ‘Yes.’ And it was, it was.

 “So, he (Fritz) turned to the suspect and he said, ‘This man saw you leave,’ at which time the suspect became a little excited.

“And he said, ‘I told you people I did.’

“And Fritz said, (talking to the suspect) ‘Now take it easy, son. We’re just trying to find out what happened here.’ He (Fritz) said (to the suspect), ‘What about the car?’

“At which time the suspect leaned forward and put both hands up on the desk, and said, ‘That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine.[7] Don’t try to drag her into this.’ Then he leaned back, and very disgustedly said, ‘everybody will know who I am now.’

“Now, this was not a brag. I know it’s been blown up to be a brag in the Warren Commission. This was not a brag; this was a man that…that was disgusted he’d blown his cover, or been caught, or something…it wasn’t a brag.”

The man in Fritz’s office suspected of murdering JD Tippit, confirmed by Roger Craig as the same man he saw run down the grassy knoll, enter a Rambler station wagon and drive away from Dealey Plaza a few minutes after the assassination, was Lee Harvey Oswald. For the Warren Commission, Craig’s assertion that Oswald was the man he saw running down the grassy knoll to the Rambler presented a significant problem, for if Oswald WAS the assassin, the fact that there was another man helping him drive away from Dealey Plaza would establish a conspiracy—a door the Commission, for whatever reason, was dedicated to not opening.

At this point it’s important to understand what the Warren Report says about Oswald’s movements after Kennedy was shot, which is summarized as follows (Please see posted maps):

The President was shot at 12:30 PM, and the Warren Report acknowledges that 3 to 5 minutes later Oswald was seen by Dallas police officer Marion Baker in the lunch room of the Book Depository. Baker was accompanied by the building supervisor who verified for Baker who Oswald was and that he worked there. Baker then left Oswald and continued his search. Sometime over the next couple of minutes Oswald left the Depository, though his departure went unnoticed by anyone. Per the Warren Report, he then walked seven blocks east on Elm Street, caught a bus, rode it back west for 2 blocks in heavy traffic; got off the bus at Lamar Street, where he turned south. Also on the bus was a former landlady of Oswald’s, Mary Bledsoe, who recognized him. After walking south for 4 more blocks on Lamar he reached the Greyhound Bus station, where he hailed a cab driven by a man named William Whaley, and rode to 500 North Beckley Street, a couple miles south and west of Dealey Plaza, about a 10-minute walk from his rooming house at 1026 North Beckley. After walking the last few blocks, Oswald arrived at the rooming house at about 1 PM, about 25 minutes or so after leaving the Book Depository. At his rooming house he was seen by the housekeeper, a woman named Earlene Roberts, who said that Oswald went to his room and came out a minute or two later after putting a jacket on. He then left, and she reports last seeing him standing at a bus stop outside the rooming house at 1:05 PM. With the rooming house being located nearly a mile from where Tippet was shot, and with Earlene Roberts’ testimony placing Oswald at the bus stop outside the rooming house at 1:05 PM, perhaps now you can see why the Commission insisted on a 1:16 PM time for Tippit’s murder—they had to ensure enough time for Oswald to traverse the distance of nearly a mile on foot to where, they claim, he shot the police officer.

According to Warren Commission, Oswald’s route immediately after leaving Book Depository, downtown view

“Double Oswalds”/Altered Testimony

And, there is another aspect to the conflict in testimony between Roger Craig saying he saw Oswald running down the grassy knoll and being picked up by the station wagon, and the witnesses Mary Bledsoe and William Whaley stating they saw him leave by the circuitous, bus/cab route on his way back to his rooming house, and that is the phenomena of “double Oswalds.” Unless you are familiar with JFK assassination data, this is something you may be completely unaware of. In the weeks before the assassination, and in the hours immediately after, on a number of occasions there were simultaneous “Oswald” sightings in mutually exclusive locations. It’s impossible, of course, for the same person to be in different locations at the same time—unless that person happens to be Lee Harvey Oswald—who apparently managed to do it a number of times.[8] “Tongue in cheek” aside, the Warren Commission chose not to entertain the possibility, however remote, that someone might be so bold as to insert Oswald “look-alikes” into the situation to promote a certain scenario. (Obviously, if shown to be the truth, the “double Oswalds” would mean a conspiracy was afoot in Dallas that day. On the face of it this may well seem outlandish to you, but I can assure you that accomplishing such things was well within the capability of intelligence organizations and their operatives, who were past masters at the art of disguise, even in 1963. And, it DOES explain how Oswald could be in two places at once. In a thorough investigation this possibility should have been considered.)  

Understanding all this, you can see the problem Craig’s testimony presented for the Commission. As a police officer, he was a reliable, trained observer; the kind you’d ordinarily depend on if you wanted to solve a crime. Instead, the final Warren Report not only discounted what Craig said about seeing Oswald leaving Dealey Plaza in the station wagon, but, according to Craig, the testimony he gave to David Belin, Warren Commission junior counsel, given on 1 April, 1964, was altered no less than 14 times, examples of which follow:

*Craig testified to the Commission that the witness Arnold Rowland told him that “he saw two men on the 6^th floor of the Book Depository 15 minutes before the President arrived: one was a Negro, who was pacing back and forth by the southwest window. The other was a white man in the southeast corner, with a rifle equipped with a scope.” In the Warren Report this was altered to, “Both were white, both were pacing in front of the southwest corner and when Rowland looked back, both were gone.”

*Craig testified that, “the driver of the station wagon had on a tan jacket.” In the Warren Report this was altered to a “white jacket.”

*Craig testified that the color of the station wagon was “light green.” The Warren Report altered the color to white.

*Craig testified that he, “…got a good look at the driver of the Rambler.” The Commission altered this to, “I did not get a good look at the driver.”

*Craig testified that, “the license plates on the Rambler were not the same color as Texas plates.” In the Warren Report this was altered to, “…it appeared the license plates were the same color as Texas plates.”

*Craig testified that in the interview with Oswald in Captain Fritz’s office on the afternoon of the assassination, Oswald had stated, “Everybody will know who I am now.” In the Warren report the word “now” was transposed, altering what Oswald said to, “Now everybody will know who I am,” making it sound like Oswald was bragging rather than displaying disappointment at having his “cover blown,” which is how Craig interpreted the accused assassin’s emotion and comment.

I suppose one, or even two alterations of Craig’s testimony could be considered mistakes—but 14? That defies belief! Why would the Warren Commission feel compelled to alter the testimony of one of the most creditable witnesses in Dealey Plaza that day?

As more information is presented in this JFK series, I will leave the answer to that question to you.

Epilog

In the end, the Warren Commission concluded that Craig must have been mistaken in stating that he saw Oswald descend the grassy knoll, climb into a light green Rambler station wagon driven by another man, and then drive down Elm Street away from Dealey Plaza. Instead they chose to believe what Mary Bledsoe and William Whaley said as witnesses to Oswald’s travels in the minutes immediately after the assassination. If the Commission wanted to avoid direct evidence of conspiracy in JFK’s murder, they could not accept Roger Craig’s eyewitness testimony, and so they didn’t. Likewise, the 7.65 Mauser rifle found by Deputy Sheriff Boone on the 6^th floor of the Book Depository, witnessed by Roger Craig, Captain Fritz, Lt. Day and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman, and which was sworn by Weitzman to be a Mauser in a notarized statement, was again assumed by the Warren Report to be a case of mistaken identity. Oswald, of course, didn’t own a Mauser; he owned a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano. Acknowledging a 2^nd rifle would be another indication of conspiracy, and the Mauser wouldn’t pin the assassination to Oswald. Thus, within 24 hours the 7.65 Mauser suddenly morphed into the 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano and disappeared from the ken of man.

But in the years after the assassination, that wasn’t so for Roger Craig. First to the Warren Commission, and then across the next decade to a bevy of assassination researchers and reporters, he never deviated from his story of what he saw: that it was Lee Harvey Oswald running down the grassy knoll and driving away in a green Rambler station wagon, and that the rifle on the 6^th floor WAS, indeed, a 7.65 Mauser. For sticking to his guns and displaying integrity he paid a very heavy price. In 1967, after speaking to a newsman about the assassination despite an order by Sheriff Bill Decker not to, he was fired from the Dallas County Sheriff’s office by Decker. From that point on Craig’s life became one of near economic ruin, as he found it very difficult to find and keep employment; when he did find jobs, he would often be let go inexplicably. Increasingly, he noticed he was being followed, and he survived no less than 3 attempts on his life in the succeeding years: the first by a gun shot as he exited a cafe in downtown Dallas that luckily missed; the second by a car bomb that injured him but didn’t kill him; the third when he was run off a mountain road in west Texas and rolled his car down the hillside, resulting in a broken back and multiple injuries and surgeries that took a year for him to recover from, but left him disabled.

Finally, on May 15, 1975, Roger Craig was found, shot to death, clad only in boxer shorts and lying face down in the middle of his bedroom in his father’s small house in Dallas, Texas. A rifle was found nearby, lying on the bed. That morning Roger’s half-brother Donald and his wife, Dennie, had visited with Roger and his father, Kristel, at the house, and had coffee with them. According to Dennie, Roger was in a good mood, laughing and joking. Roger told Dennie that three days earlier he had renewed his driver’s license and in a few days was going on a fishing trip, for which he’d gotten a fishing license. Also, that very day JFK researcher and photo analyst Robert Groden[9] was coming to Dallas for an appointment with Craig to interview him, something Groden very much looked forward to. After Dennie and Donald left, Kristel left Roger in the living room watching TV and went outside to work on a lawn mower. About a half hour later, on coming back into the house, he discovered Roger’s body. Kristel, who was hard of hearing, states that he did not hear a shot; that he’d never before seen the rifle left on the bed, and that it did not belong to his son.

The death of Roger Craig was officially ruled a suicide. [10]

Many who knew him, including his father, Kristel, his half-brother, Donald, and his sister-in-law, Dennie, who were the last people to see Roger alive, don’t believe it.

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[1] J. D. Tippit (September 18, 1924 – November 22, 1963) was an American World War II U.S. Army veteran and police officer who served as an 11-year veteran with the Dallas Police Dept. About 45 minutes after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Tippit was shot and killed in a residential neighborhood in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was initially arrested for the murder of Tippit and was subsequently charged for killing Kennedy. Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, two days later. The Warren Commission did a poor job of recovering the facts regarding Tippit’s murder, leaving many unanswered questions. To me it appears they were more interested in trying to implicate Oswald than in getting at the truth. Look into it for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

[2] The information provided by Mr. Rowland, accurately recorded and relayed by Roger Craig, is very significant as it would indicate more than one man was involved in the assassination, and could have countered the lone gunman theory before it ever took hold. According to Rowland, the FBI agent who interviewed him in Dealey Plaza that day, did not accurately record his information. In his testimony to the Warren Commission, Rowland stated, “The FBI agents didn’t seem very interested in the other man on the 6^th floor,” and that the, “FBI agent deleted and omitted any reference to the other man,” in his report to the Warren Commission.

[3] The story of Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers (1929-1969) would likely warrant its own post in this series and is too extensive for one footnote. Briefly, Walthers was in Dealey Plaza and was the first to interview James Tague, the bystander who was slightly wounded by a chip of concrete when an errant shot hit the curb he was standing near. After the assassination, Walthers was also observed by witnesses stooping down and retrieving something from the grass near the knoll. Walthers claimed he had discovered a bullet, but later changed his story to his discovery being a piece of JFK’s skull. Buddy Walthers was shot and killed in 1969 by an escaped convict he’d been sent to arrest. The knowledge of whatever he’d discovered that day in Dealey Plaza went to his grave with him.

[4] James Eric (Bill) Decker, (1898-1970) was something of a legend as a Texas lawman. His relentless pursuit of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker and his capture of hardened criminal Raymond Hamilton focused national attention on him in the 1930s. He ran for sheriff in 1948, when he defeated the incumbent, and held the post until his death in 1970. Throughout his twenty-two years as sheriff he never faced another opponent in an election. More attention was focused on Sheriff Decker in November 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Roger Craig, in his autobiographical account of his experiences during and after the assassination, is critical of Decker and his autocratic style in repressing his officers from telling what they’d seen in Dealey Plaza. As noted in this post, Decker is the one who fired Craig, ending his 8-year career in the Dallas County Sheriff’s office. Clearly, they weren’t big fans of each other.

[5] Mark Lane (February 24, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American attorney, New York State legislator, civil rights activist, and Vietnam war crimes investigator. Lane is best known as a leading researcher, author, and conspiracy theorist on the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. From his 1966 number-one bestselling critique of the Warren Commission, “Rush to Judgement”, to “Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK”, published in 2011, Lane wrote at least four major works on the JFK assassination and no fewer than ten books overall.

[6] When it comes to the getting the time right in the murder of JD Tippet, the devil is in the details, and it is just one of the major failings of the Warren Commission. Despite the evidence to the contrary, the Commission’s insistence on the time of Tippet’s death being 1:16 PM makes one suspicious of their motive for being so adamant. With Oswald being nearly a mile away at the rooming house at 1:05 PM there was literally no way for him to get to where Tippet was shot before 1:15 PM.

[7] According to her detractors, Ruth Paine (b 1932—at 90 years is still alive) is a government agent who helped frame Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of JFK. To her defenders, however, she is simply an innocent bystander caught up in history. She was a friend of Oswald’s wife, Marina, who was living with her at the time of the assassination. Of the 500 plus witnesses interviewed by the Warren Commission, Ms. Paine was more extensively interviewed than any other, answering more than 5,000 questions. (one must wonder why) The average number of questions asked per witness was about 300.

[8] The phenomena of “double Oswalds” in the JFK assassination data is significant enough that it warrants its own post in this JFK Evidence series, which I will get to in due time. Watch for it.

[9] Robert J. Groden (born November 22, 1945) is an American author and photo analyst who has written extensively about conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. His books include The Killing of a President: The Complete Photographic Record of the JFK Assassination, the Conspiracy, and the Cover-up; The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald: A Comprehensive Photographic Record; and JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (shorter version than his 1975 co-authored book). Groden is a photo-optics technician who served as a photographic consultant for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. A harsh critic of the Warren Commission, he also testified at the 1975 United States President’s Commission on CIA activities within the United States.

[10] If you go searching the internet for data on Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig you will find it generally falls into two camps: Roger Craig apologists and Roger Craig critics. From the above I think you can tell which camp I’m in, but I encourage you to look into these things for yourself. To get you started I am sharing here two links. The first is an article critical of Craig written in the 1990s by Dave Perry entitled “Rambler Man.” https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/77431.pd

The 2^nd is an article entitled “In Defense of Roger Craig,” which does a decent job of critiquing “Rambler Man.”

Who was Roger Craig..why does it matter so much to us now..?

Check these out, do your own research and draw your own conclusions.