Shooting of Warren Reynolds and subsequent suicide of Betty Mcdonald, a former Jack Ruby employee
Despite the manipulations of Mark Lane in trying to seed doubt about Lee Harvey Oswald being the killer of police officer J.D. Tippit, the shooting of Warren Reynolds and subsequent suicide of albi provider Betty McDonald, who was linked to Oswald killer Jack Ruby, still are a very curious event.
No mention of Reynolds having identified Oswald. Reynolds was shot in the head a day after this interview by a person close to Jack Ruby. Patterson will later claim he was never shown a picture by the FBI.
Harold Russell went the other way, to Tippit.
FBI special agents John T. Kesler and Vernon Mitchem also interview Richard Randolph Carr on January 14, 1964. He too was associated to people in Jack Ruby's circle.
BOB CONSIDINE AT SCENE
Violent Dallas: A New Chapter
Oswald's Identifier Also Shot
By BOB CONSIDINE
February 22, 1964
(Hearst Headling Services)
Special to N. Y. Journal-American
DALLAS, Feb. 22-One of the men who put the finger on accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald [note: Reynolds had not identified him to the FBI] after President Kennedy was killed has also been shot.
And the girlfriend of a local resident who was questioned about this second shooting turned out to have been a stripteaser in the Dallas nightspot owned by Jack Ruby, on trial now for killing Oswald.
Adding to this incredible skein of circumstances that came to light today is the revelation that the stripper has committed suicide.
These facts, pieced together today--exactly three months after President Kennedy was slain--provide a strange epilogue showing that the jinx of violence continues to persist around figures involved in the assassination, one way or another.
Call it a series of coincidences, if you will. But here they are:
Last month a Dallas used-car dealer named Warren Reynolds was shot in the head. A shooting is not necessarily front-page news here, particularly if the victim lives.
There were 113 murders here last year. At one time, not long ago District Attorney Wade had five men in the death house, awaiting their turn in the [electric] chair.
THIS IS DIFFERENT
But the shooting of Warren Reynolds was different.
The Reynolds Motor Co. is close to the spot where Officer J. D. Tippit stopped Oswald as he hurried away from the scene of the assassination. Oswald reportedly shot the officer three times and killed him.
The sound of shooting brought Reynolds out of his office. He told police that he saw Oswald running away, putting new shells into a pistol as he did. He later joined with others in identifying him as the man.
Last month Reynolds was locking up his office for the night and had pushed two of the 30 buttons which doused the lights of the establishment when a man rose from behind a filing cabinet and shot him in the temple with a .22-caliber rifle.
Mr. Reynolds has made a remarkable recovery after doctors had feared permanent loss of speech.
SUSPECT CLEARED
A local desperado named Garner was picked up by the polce after the Reynolds shooting but was cleared. His girl, Betty (Mooney) McDonald, took a lie detector test that helped spring Garner. Two weeks ago she was arrested for engaging in a public brawl with her roommate. Last week she hanged herself in her cell.
Betty never won any beauty contests, but she always said she had a claim to fame.
She had worked as a stripper at a place called the Carousel.
Jack Ruby's Carousel.
There is pathetically little to mark the spot at which John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated just three months ago today.
THe sixth floor window of the ugly Schoolbook Depository, the window from which briefly protruded the barrel and muzzle of the 5.55 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano, is shut now. It alone among the windows on that top floor of the building where Oswald worked, is shutered--with a Venetian blind.
The bend around which the open car was passing is heavy with traffic, trucks and cars hammering along the one-way street on assorted errands toward the complex of overpasses just down the road. None stops. Few slow down.
There is a little rise of lawn at the place where President Kennedy's head was shattered, while he acknowledged cheers that caused him to agree with the Governor's lady, riding on the jump seat, that Dallas certainly had turned out fine for him.
The lawn leads gently up to a concrete perula and walking gallery, part of the decor of Dealey Plaza, a bit of park provided by the publisher of the Dallas Evening News to relieve the hard features of the neighborhood.
Against the wall of the gallery huddles a sad patch of wreaths, sprays and potted plants, none them bearing his name or the name of the donors.
A little bowl of three bright red full-blooming tulips was a relief, but not enough of one to keep the eyes off a blanket of red roses decorated with a few Christmas trees balls.
The story turns from chapter to chapter, never ending. It resounds in the sometimes thunderclap trial of the man who killed the man who killed the man. It is debated in the solemn councils of the Warren Commission in Washington. It remains "open" on the books of the FBI and the Secret Service.
And the spot where it happened.
It is as forlorn as an unkept grave.
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Warren Commission report:
"At least 12 persons saw the man with the revolver in the vicinity of the Tippit crime scene at or immediately after the shooting. By the evening of November 22, five of them had identified Lee Harvey Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. ... Domingo Benavides [saw the shooting from his truck from 25 feet; saw Oswald run off while emptying his emptying his gun; called for help with Tippit's car radio; said Oswald bore a resemblance to the man he saw; Benavides' brother was shot on Feb. 15, 1965 when trying to duck for cover in a bar fight he wasn't involved; was changed to Feb. 1964 by Penn Jones and such to make people believe he was intimidated] ... Helen Markham [Saw Tippit stopping next to Oswald, talking to him, with Oswald shooting Tippit when the latter got out of his car] ... In the evening of November 22, Barbara Jeanette and Virginia Davis viewed a group of four men in a lineup and each one picked Oswald as the man who crossed their lawn whie emptying [reloading] his pistol. ... Ted Callaway [Yelled at the shooter who murmeld smething back], Sam Guinyard [shooter past him within 10 feet]... Callaway heard five shots, and Guinyard heard three. ... Guinyard and Callaway viewed the same lineup of four men from which Mrs. Markham had earlier made her identification of Lee Harvey Oswald. Both men picked Oswald as the man who had run south on Patton with a gun in his hand. ... "A sixth did so the next day. Three others subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. Two witnesses testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. One witness felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification. ... "As Oswald ran south on Patton Avenue toward Jefferson Boulevard he was moving in the direction of a used-car lot located on the southeast corner of this intersection. Four men--Warren Reynolds, Harold Russell, Pat Patterson and L. J. Lewis --were on the lot at the time, and they saw a white male with a revolver in his hands running south on Patton. When the man reached Jefferson, he turned right and headed west. Reynolds and Patterson decided to follow him. When he reached a gasoline service station one block away he turned north and walked toward a parking area in the rear of the station. Neither Reynolds nor Patterson saw the man after he turned off Jefferson at the service station. ... "These four witnesses were interviewed by FBI agents 2 months after the shooting. Russell and Patterson were shown a picture of Oswald and they stated that Oswald was the man they saw on November 22, 1963. Russell confirmed this statement in a sworn affidavit for the Commission. Patterson, when asked later to confirm his identification by affidavit said he did not recall having been shown the photograph. He was then shown two photographs of Oswald and he advised that Oswald was "unquestionably" the man he saw. Reynolds did not make a positive identification when interviewed by the FBI, but he subsequently testified before a Commission staff member and, when shown two photographs of Oswald, stated that they were photographs of the man he saw. L.J. Lewis said in an interview that because of the distance from which he observed the gunman he would hesitate to state whether the man was identical with Oswald." |
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Acquilla Clemons (comes across as semi-retarded; trouble speaking properly), an ignored alleged witness by the FBI to the murder of Police Officer J. D. Tippet, in her 'Rush to Judgment' interview with Mark Lane:
"Just down the block from where Tippit was killed. Yes, I saw him a pretty many times. Yes, I heard the shots. I ran out into the street ... where he was lying and I looked at him. ... Yes, I did [see a man with a gun]. He was reloading. I saw him reloading his gun. He was kinda chunky. He was kinda heavy. He wasn't a very big man. Short guy. ... Yes, on the opposite side of the street [there was another man]. All I know is he told him to go. ... The man kept going straight down the street [in a different direction]. ... [What the other man wore:]Looked like khakis and a white shirt [Oswald was still carrying a jacket at this point]. He was tall. He was thin. Yes, [the one with the gun] was short and kinda heavy. ... I didn't see anyone [as for the Warren Commission]. Yes, a man came. I don't know what he was. He came to my house and talked to me. He looked like a policeman to me. Yes, he wore a gun. ... About two days [after the shooting that he came by]. Said that I might get hurt. Well, someone might hurt me, if I would talk about what I saw. He just said it would be best if I didn't say anything, because I might get hurt." |
Lane was CIA, as his key involvement in the Jonestown Cult and the Liberty Lobby amply demonstrates. Might well be a piece of disinformation in light of what all the other witnesses claimed. Still, the shooting of Reynolds is very strange, as well as the numerous other deaths of people who saw Oswald that day.
Lane somehow got in Clemons what he couldn't get from an established witness as Helen Markham: a description of the shooter as the complete opposite of Oswald.
Warren Report: "Although in the phone conversation [Helen Markham] described the man as "short," [527] on November 22, within minutes of the shooting and before the lineup, Mrs. Markham described the man to the police as 5'8'' tall."
Mark Lane to Warren Commission: "I spoke with the deponent, the eyewitness, Helen Louise Markham, and Mrs. Markham told me--Miss or Mrs., I didn't ask her if she was married--told me that she was a hundred feet away from the police car, not the fifty feet which appears in the affidavit. She gave me a more detailed description of the man who she said shot Officer Tippit. She said he was short, a little on the heavy side, and his hair was somewhat bushy. I think it is fair to state that an accurate description of Oswald would be average height, quite slender with thin and receding hair."
Lane interview with Markham, which he only released to the Warren Commission after some resistance, proving he was trying to create false leads: "Mr. Lane. But, well, just, could you just give me one moment and tell me. I read that you told some of the reporters that he was short, stocky, and had bushy hair. Mrs. Markham. No, no. I did not say this. Mr. Lane. You did not say that? Mrs. Markham. No, sir. Mr. Lane. Well, would you say that he was stocky? Mrs. Markham. Uh, he was short. Mr. Lane. He was short. Mrs. Markham. Yes. Mr. Lane. And was he a little bit on the heavy side? Mrs. Markham. Uh, not too heavy. Mr. Lane. Not too heavy, but slightly heavy? Mrs. Markham. Oh, well, he was, no he wasn't, didn't look too heavy, uh-uh. Mr. Lane. He wasn't too heavy, and would you say that he had rather bushy hair, kind of hair? Mrs. Markham. Yeh, just a little bit bushy, uh huh. Mr. Lane. It was a little bit bushy. Mrs. Markham. Yes. [Then Lane questioned her about the police lineup. Mrs. Markham stated that she identified Oswald in the police lineup. Lane asked whether the police had told her who it might be. Mrs. Markham replied, "They didn't tell me one thing." Lane then returned to the events of the Tippit shooting and once again went back to Mrs. Markham's description of the gunman] Mr. Lane. Did you say that he was short and a little bit on the heavy side and had slightly bushy hair? Mrs. Markham. Uh, no, I did not. They didn't ask me that. [Then Lane asked her again about how she had described Oswald when she made the affidavit.] Mr. Lane. And when you were there, did they ever ask you anything else about Oswald? About whether he was tall or short? Mrs. Markham. Uh, yes, sir. They asked me that. Mr. Lane. And you said he was short, eh? Mrs. Markham. Yes, sir, he is short. He was short. Mr. Lane. He was short. And they asked if he was thin or heavy, and you said he was a little on the heavy side? Mrs. Markham. And he was, uh, uh, well not too heavy. Uh, say around 160, maybe 150. Mr. Lane. Well, did you say he wasn't too heavy, but he was a little heavy? Mrs. Markham. Uh-huh. Mr. Lane. You did say that? Mrs. Markham. I did identify him in the lineup. Mr. Lane. Yes, and did you say that the man who shot, did you tell the officers that the man who shot Tippit had bushy hair? Mrs. Markham. Uh, no, I did not. Mr. Lane. But, but he did have bushy hair you said, just a little bushy? Mrs. Markham. Well, you wouldn't say it hadn't been combed you know or anything. Mr. Lane. Yes. Mrs. Markham. Of course, he probably had been through a lot, and was kind of tore up a little . . . [Lane returned to the shooting of Officer Tippit and what Mrs. Markham saw and then he asked her about her identification of the gunman in the police station. She said that she wanted to be sure, so she had had the police turn the man in the lineup "and they turned him, and it was him." For a third time Lane tried to have Mrs. Markham state that the person that shot Tippit was short, stocky and had bushy hair.] Mr. Lane. Have you told any reporters about anything? Mrs. Markham. Well, one. They worried me to death. Mr. Lane. I'm sure they are after you because you're a very important witness. Mrs. Markham. Uh-huh. Mr. Lane. Did any of the reporters, did you tell any reporter that the person that shot Oswald, shot Tippit was short, stocky, and had bushy hair? Mrs. Markham I did not. Mr. Lane. You don't remember telling it because one of the reporters reported that in the newspaper. Mrs. Markham. Yes, I read that. Mr. Lane. You read that. What paper was that, do you recall? Mrs. Markham. Uh, I believe it was in the Herald. Mr. Lane. The Herald? Mrs. Markham. I believe, it might have been the News. Mr. Lane. It was one of the Dallas papers, uh? Mrs. Markham. Yes, sir. Mr. Lane. And, do you know what day that was? Mrs. Markham. No, sir. Mr. Lane. That was shortly after, though, wasn't it? Mrs. Markham. Yes, sir. They gave my address, name and everything. Mr. Lane. Yes, and they had you quoted as saying that he was short, stocky, and had bushy hair. Mrs. Markham. Well, they are just not right. Mr. Lane. But that's what they said, though. Mrs. Markham. I know it. They can put anything in papers."