donald willis
2021-02-22 12:03:20 UTC
Only Oswald could have told McWatters that "the president was shot in the
temple"
"I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman and asked her if she knew
the president had been shot.... I told her if she did not believe me to
ask the man behind her that he had told me the president was shot in the
temple". (Cecil J. McWatters 11/22/63 affidavit)
Bus driver McWatters told the FBI on 11/22: "Somewhere after he
[McWatters] turned on Marsalis he said to a male passenger, 'I wonder
where they shot the President?' This man said, 'They shot him in the
temple'.... [McWatters] picked up an old lady at the corner of Vermont &
Marsalis.... He told her... to ask the man sitting behind him. She looked
at this man [a teen-ager], who was the one who had told McWatters that the
President had been shot in the temple...."
Already, McWatters has begun the systematic dismantling of his affidavit
of the same day, adding to the latter details which are intended to negate
his lineup identification of Lee Oswald as the man whom he bussed into Oak
Cliff.
1) What, in his (signed) affidavit, was "This man looks like the #2 man I
saw in a line up tonight"--an identification called "positive" by the
police, on the lineup card ("With Malice", p458)--becomes, in the
(unsigned) FBI report, "He stated that this man was Lee Oswald, but
emphasized that he cannot specifically identify him as being on his bus
or as being the person who made the remark to the effect that the
President was shot in the temple". (In other words, all that McWatters
is now saying is that there happened to be someone in the lineup named
Lee Oswald.)
2) No mention was made in his affidavit that he had "heard over a radio
in a car sitting next to the bus that the President had been shot".
3) "This man" has now become, in the FBI report, "a teen-ager".
4) "I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman" has become "He picked
up an old lady at the corner of Vermont and Marsalis...." The addition
of the pick-up cross street for McWatters' "shot in the temple" woman
was apparently supposed to have sealed the deal: Vermont is about a
dozen blocks beyond the area of 10th & Patton and several more than
that beyond Oswald's rooming house. Exit Oswald, enter the
"teen-ager".
Roy Milton Jones [the teenager], on 3/30/64, told the FBI, "The bus driver
asked [the woman who had boarded 'after they crossed the Marsalis Bridge']
whether she had heard that the President had been shot.... [He] pointed to
Jones and said, 'Ask him, he saw it'." [Jones couldn't have seen "it"--he
had been in school.]....The woman turned to [Jones] and he told her, 'I
don't know anything about it. I just heard some others say that the
President had been shot'.... Jones advised that he could not recall any
conversation between the bus driver & himself or any other person on the
bus about the President being shot in the temple. He said he did not hear
any person make this remark on the bus." (This "advisement" seems to come
out of the blue since Jones, in his account, had not yet mentioned the
word "temple". Apparently, it was embedded in an FBI question.)
Exit the teenager. Strike "Vermont".
Contrary to Jones' statement here, McWatters said, in his 11/22 affidavit,
"This man...never did say anything [to the woman]." Again, and more
importantly, also contrary to Jones' statement, McWatters said, as noted
above, in his FBI statement, that it was Jones who told him that the
President "had been shot in the temple". And Jones' telltale "He saw it"
could have applied only to Oswald, not to Jones.
Again, in his Commission testimony, McWatters tried to pin "shot in the
temple" on Jones:
"Well, there was a teenage boy, I would say 17 or 18 years of age... and
after I turned on Houston Street I said to him and I made the remark, I
wonder where the President was shot, and I believe he made the remark that
it was probably in the head if he was in a convertible or something to
that effect." Desperate--or maybe just hopelessly confused--McWatters,
elsewhere in that same testimony, contradicts himself re the "teenager":
Senator Cooper: "Is [Oswald] the same man who told you that the President
had been shot in the temple?" / McWatters: "No, sir." / Cooper: "Who
told you that?" / McWatters: "A man in an automobile in front of me, in
other words, that was sitting in a car come back and told me." / Cooper:
"Told you what?" / McWatters: "That the President had been shot, that he
had heard over his radio in his car that the President had been shot."
Auto ex machina. Scorecard so far: McWatters has now taken three stabs
at identifying the person who told him that the President had been "shot
in the temple"--Oswald, Jones, and the "man in the automobile". Then,
McWatters, almost immediately, cancels out his third choice, automobile
man, by reverting to his old standard, "the teenager", later in his
testimony:
Ball: "You told [the woman on the bus]... if she didn't believe [you] to
ask the man behind her, that he had told [you] that the President was shot
in the temple". / McWatters: "Yes." / Ball: "Was that the man, was that
the teenager?" / McWatters: "Yes."
And, as we have seen, Jones rejects McWatters' second choice, Jones
himself. That leaves... Oswald. McWatters fecklessly denies almost
everything in his 11/22 affidavit. But he cannot come up with a viable
alternate source to Oswald for that "shot in the temple", in his
affidavit. That source, then, must have been... Oswald.
On page 2 of CE 2641, Jones recounts the story--apparently first told in
McWatters' Commission testimony--of Oswald and the lady getting on, then
off the bus on Elm St. But Jones then adds that he thought that "it might
have been Oswald only because the driver told him so". McWatters, in his
testimony, admits--when asked if he has not "seen this young man several
times since [Nov. 22nd]--"Yes, sir." Plenty of time, then, for the
17-year-old Jones to absorb, also, the on-and-off story from McWatters.
"Only because the bus driver told him so...." Corroboration by
osmosis....
Note also the admirable precision bus choreography of the on-and-off
man-and-woman. ON "6 blocks before Houston", OFF "4 blocks before
Houston", about the same time (says Jones) that a policeman "told the
driver no one was to leave the bus" (p2) If this were a movie, you
wouldn't buy the split-second timing of it all. Another minute, and
Oswald is stuck on Elm until about 1:44! (See the "A final clue"
paragraph near the end here.) Hitchcock would have been most pleased.
The serio-comic odyssey of the man who told McWatters that the President
was "shot in the temple" ends right back where it started: with McWatters'
11/22 affidavit. Almost as if the poor bedevilled, poked and prodded
McWatters was straining mightily to pass on that phrase to someone, anyone
but Oswald. Why? Because in his original affidavit, McWatters attributed
it to "the man behind" the woman on the Marsalis bus in Oak Cliff.
Because, if that man were Oswald, then the latter would have gotten to Oak
Cliff too late to have shot Patrolman J.D. Tippit. (See below.)
The core of both of McWatters' versions of his story (one starring Oswald,
one starring Jones) and of Jones' version is the McWatters/Marsalis-woman
incident, and the broad outline of all three versions is similar. But
Jones adamantly rejects the core of the core: the phrase "shot in the
temple".
Exhibit A: In his 11/22/63 FBI interview, McWatters states that his bus
was "delayed for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes [on Elm St.] due
to a traffic jam."
Exhibit B: The Warren Report (p163) notes that an Oswald walk from the bus
(at 1:44) to the bus station, "where Oswald entered [William] Whaley's
cab, would have taken him three or four minutes." Then, a six-minute cab
ride would have gotten Oswald to Oak Cliff about 12:54 (p163), then it's
another six minutes, on foot, to the rooming house (p163 again), or about
1 o'clock.
Back to the bus: According to McWatters, the bus was still stuck on Elm
as late as 12:59, and a six-minute-plus bus ride would have gotten him to
Marsalis and 5th St. (the closest possible Marsalis stop to the rooming
house), in Oak Cliff, about 1:05.
Meanwhile--back to Whaley's cab--the intersection of Neely & Beckley (the
supposed cab drop-off site) and the intersection of Marsalis & 5th St. are
roughly equidistant from the rooming house. So a six-minute walk (p163)
for cab Oswald from Neely & Beckley to the rooming house would also be
about a six-minute walk from Marsalis & 5th, which latter would put bus
Oswald at the house at about 1:11.
The WR (p165) times the walk, "at a brisk pace", from 1026 N. Beckley to
10th & Patton at about 12 or 13 minutes. That would put the bus-to-Oak
Cliff Oswald there about 1:23.
Exhibit C: Dale Myers pegs the time that Tippit was shot--at 10th &
Patton--at 1:14 ("With Malice" p382). Missed it by that much... However,
if bus Oswald left 1026 N. Beckley at about 1:13 and walked the 15 blocks
or so, straight to the *theater*, he would have arrived there about 1:35,
leaving him time in-between to evade police cars--he had, after all, fired
a shot or two in Dealey and would most probably be a little nervous....
A final clue that Jones was not McWatters' man, the man "who told [him]
the president was shot in the temple", a clue that Jones was perhaps not
even on the same bus as Oswald: Jones said that the bus on which he was
riding was "held up by... police officers... who boarded the bus and
checked each passenger to see if any were carrying firearms... [this bus
was] held up for ABOUT ONE HOUR...." (CE 2641 pp2,3). Startlingly,
McWatters does not mention this significant incident. Somewhat more
significant, at least, than being held up by traffic for some 15 minutes.
Moreover, Jones "recalled that at this time a policeman notified the
driver the President had been shot...." (p2) So, when Jones says that he
"heard some others say that the President had been shot", he meant that he
heard the police saying that... to "the driver". "The driver". Not only
does McWatters not recall the police holding up his bus "for about one
hour", he does not recall a policeman telling him that the "President had
been shot". Automobile man didn't tell him. Jones didn't tell him. Did
a policeman tell him? Jones overheard a policeman telling *a* driver, not
necessarily McWatters. What bus was McWatters driving? What planet was
he on? Not Jones' bus, at least. Maybe not Jones' planet.
Upshot: Oswald was "the man behind" the woman on the bus in Oak Cliff.
Note: There is no reason to believe that the so-called "hard [physical]
evidence" here was treated any more honestly than was the witness
evidence. That is, the lad who was fortuitously "discovered", and then
haplessly maintained by McWatters to have been the "shot in the temple"
man--the lad was obviously not that man, and McWatters had no overt reason
of his own to say that Jones was that man. The ones who did have reason
were the ones who wanted to pin two murders on Oswald, not just the one
for which he was, I believe, responsible....
Perhaps, in fact, they were the ones of which Roy Milton Jones was
speaking here, in his FBI interview (page 4):
"[Jones] said that, in conversation with this same bus driver on the
following Monday, the driver told him the Dallas Police Department had him
up until one o'clock on Saturday or Sunday morning questioning him about
the passenger on his bus who looked like Lee Harvey Oswald."
temple"
"I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman and asked her if she knew
the president had been shot.... I told her if she did not believe me to
ask the man behind her that he had told me the president was shot in the
temple". (Cecil J. McWatters 11/22/63 affidavit)
Bus driver McWatters told the FBI on 11/22: "Somewhere after he
[McWatters] turned on Marsalis he said to a male passenger, 'I wonder
where they shot the President?' This man said, 'They shot him in the
temple'.... [McWatters] picked up an old lady at the corner of Vermont &
Marsalis.... He told her... to ask the man sitting behind him. She looked
at this man [a teen-ager], who was the one who had told McWatters that the
President had been shot in the temple...."
Already, McWatters has begun the systematic dismantling of his affidavit
of the same day, adding to the latter details which are intended to negate
his lineup identification of Lee Oswald as the man whom he bussed into Oak
Cliff.
1) What, in his (signed) affidavit, was "This man looks like the #2 man I
saw in a line up tonight"--an identification called "positive" by the
police, on the lineup card ("With Malice", p458)--becomes, in the
(unsigned) FBI report, "He stated that this man was Lee Oswald, but
emphasized that he cannot specifically identify him as being on his bus
or as being the person who made the remark to the effect that the
President was shot in the temple". (In other words, all that McWatters
is now saying is that there happened to be someone in the lineup named
Lee Oswald.)
2) No mention was made in his affidavit that he had "heard over a radio
in a car sitting next to the bus that the President had been shot".
3) "This man" has now become, in the FBI report, "a teen-ager".
4) "I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman" has become "He picked
up an old lady at the corner of Vermont and Marsalis...." The addition
of the pick-up cross street for McWatters' "shot in the temple" woman
was apparently supposed to have sealed the deal: Vermont is about a
dozen blocks beyond the area of 10th & Patton and several more than
that beyond Oswald's rooming house. Exit Oswald, enter the
"teen-ager".
Roy Milton Jones [the teenager], on 3/30/64, told the FBI, "The bus driver
asked [the woman who had boarded 'after they crossed the Marsalis Bridge']
whether she had heard that the President had been shot.... [He] pointed to
Jones and said, 'Ask him, he saw it'." [Jones couldn't have seen "it"--he
had been in school.]....The woman turned to [Jones] and he told her, 'I
don't know anything about it. I just heard some others say that the
President had been shot'.... Jones advised that he could not recall any
conversation between the bus driver & himself or any other person on the
bus about the President being shot in the temple. He said he did not hear
any person make this remark on the bus." (This "advisement" seems to come
out of the blue since Jones, in his account, had not yet mentioned the
word "temple". Apparently, it was embedded in an FBI question.)
Exit the teenager. Strike "Vermont".
Contrary to Jones' statement here, McWatters said, in his 11/22 affidavit,
"This man...never did say anything [to the woman]." Again, and more
importantly, also contrary to Jones' statement, McWatters said, as noted
above, in his FBI statement, that it was Jones who told him that the
President "had been shot in the temple". And Jones' telltale "He saw it"
could have applied only to Oswald, not to Jones.
Again, in his Commission testimony, McWatters tried to pin "shot in the
temple" on Jones:
"Well, there was a teenage boy, I would say 17 or 18 years of age... and
after I turned on Houston Street I said to him and I made the remark, I
wonder where the President was shot, and I believe he made the remark that
it was probably in the head if he was in a convertible or something to
that effect." Desperate--or maybe just hopelessly confused--McWatters,
elsewhere in that same testimony, contradicts himself re the "teenager":
Senator Cooper: "Is [Oswald] the same man who told you that the President
had been shot in the temple?" / McWatters: "No, sir." / Cooper: "Who
told you that?" / McWatters: "A man in an automobile in front of me, in
other words, that was sitting in a car come back and told me." / Cooper:
"Told you what?" / McWatters: "That the President had been shot, that he
had heard over his radio in his car that the President had been shot."
Auto ex machina. Scorecard so far: McWatters has now taken three stabs
at identifying the person who told him that the President had been "shot
in the temple"--Oswald, Jones, and the "man in the automobile". Then,
McWatters, almost immediately, cancels out his third choice, automobile
man, by reverting to his old standard, "the teenager", later in his
testimony:
Ball: "You told [the woman on the bus]... if she didn't believe [you] to
ask the man behind her, that he had told [you] that the President was shot
in the temple". / McWatters: "Yes." / Ball: "Was that the man, was that
the teenager?" / McWatters: "Yes."
And, as we have seen, Jones rejects McWatters' second choice, Jones
himself. That leaves... Oswald. McWatters fecklessly denies almost
everything in his 11/22 affidavit. But he cannot come up with a viable
alternate source to Oswald for that "shot in the temple", in his
affidavit. That source, then, must have been... Oswald.
On page 2 of CE 2641, Jones recounts the story--apparently first told in
McWatters' Commission testimony--of Oswald and the lady getting on, then
off the bus on Elm St. But Jones then adds that he thought that "it might
have been Oswald only because the driver told him so". McWatters, in his
testimony, admits--when asked if he has not "seen this young man several
times since [Nov. 22nd]--"Yes, sir." Plenty of time, then, for the
17-year-old Jones to absorb, also, the on-and-off story from McWatters.
"Only because the bus driver told him so...." Corroboration by
osmosis....
Note also the admirable precision bus choreography of the on-and-off
man-and-woman. ON "6 blocks before Houston", OFF "4 blocks before
Houston", about the same time (says Jones) that a policeman "told the
driver no one was to leave the bus" (p2) If this were a movie, you
wouldn't buy the split-second timing of it all. Another minute, and
Oswald is stuck on Elm until about 1:44! (See the "A final clue"
paragraph near the end here.) Hitchcock would have been most pleased.
The serio-comic odyssey of the man who told McWatters that the President
was "shot in the temple" ends right back where it started: with McWatters'
11/22 affidavit. Almost as if the poor bedevilled, poked and prodded
McWatters was straining mightily to pass on that phrase to someone, anyone
but Oswald. Why? Because in his original affidavit, McWatters attributed
it to "the man behind" the woman on the Marsalis bus in Oak Cliff.
Because, if that man were Oswald, then the latter would have gotten to Oak
Cliff too late to have shot Patrolman J.D. Tippit. (See below.)
The core of both of McWatters' versions of his story (one starring Oswald,
one starring Jones) and of Jones' version is the McWatters/Marsalis-woman
incident, and the broad outline of all three versions is similar. But
Jones adamantly rejects the core of the core: the phrase "shot in the
temple".
Exhibit A: In his 11/22/63 FBI interview, McWatters states that his bus
was "delayed for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes [on Elm St.] due
to a traffic jam."
Exhibit B: The Warren Report (p163) notes that an Oswald walk from the bus
(at 1:44) to the bus station, "where Oswald entered [William] Whaley's
cab, would have taken him three or four minutes." Then, a six-minute cab
ride would have gotten Oswald to Oak Cliff about 12:54 (p163), then it's
another six minutes, on foot, to the rooming house (p163 again), or about
1 o'clock.
Back to the bus: According to McWatters, the bus was still stuck on Elm
as late as 12:59, and a six-minute-plus bus ride would have gotten him to
Marsalis and 5th St. (the closest possible Marsalis stop to the rooming
house), in Oak Cliff, about 1:05.
Meanwhile--back to Whaley's cab--the intersection of Neely & Beckley (the
supposed cab drop-off site) and the intersection of Marsalis & 5th St. are
roughly equidistant from the rooming house. So a six-minute walk (p163)
for cab Oswald from Neely & Beckley to the rooming house would also be
about a six-minute walk from Marsalis & 5th, which latter would put bus
Oswald at the house at about 1:11.
The WR (p165) times the walk, "at a brisk pace", from 1026 N. Beckley to
10th & Patton at about 12 or 13 minutes. That would put the bus-to-Oak
Cliff Oswald there about 1:23.
Exhibit C: Dale Myers pegs the time that Tippit was shot--at 10th &
Patton--at 1:14 ("With Malice" p382). Missed it by that much... However,
if bus Oswald left 1026 N. Beckley at about 1:13 and walked the 15 blocks
or so, straight to the *theater*, he would have arrived there about 1:35,
leaving him time in-between to evade police cars--he had, after all, fired
a shot or two in Dealey and would most probably be a little nervous....
A final clue that Jones was not McWatters' man, the man "who told [him]
the president was shot in the temple", a clue that Jones was perhaps not
even on the same bus as Oswald: Jones said that the bus on which he was
riding was "held up by... police officers... who boarded the bus and
checked each passenger to see if any were carrying firearms... [this bus
was] held up for ABOUT ONE HOUR...." (CE 2641 pp2,3). Startlingly,
McWatters does not mention this significant incident. Somewhat more
significant, at least, than being held up by traffic for some 15 minutes.
Moreover, Jones "recalled that at this time a policeman notified the
driver the President had been shot...." (p2) So, when Jones says that he
"heard some others say that the President had been shot", he meant that he
heard the police saying that... to "the driver". "The driver". Not only
does McWatters not recall the police holding up his bus "for about one
hour", he does not recall a policeman telling him that the "President had
been shot". Automobile man didn't tell him. Jones didn't tell him. Did
a policeman tell him? Jones overheard a policeman telling *a* driver, not
necessarily McWatters. What bus was McWatters driving? What planet was
he on? Not Jones' bus, at least. Maybe not Jones' planet.
Upshot: Oswald was "the man behind" the woman on the bus in Oak Cliff.
Note: There is no reason to believe that the so-called "hard [physical]
evidence" here was treated any more honestly than was the witness
evidence. That is, the lad who was fortuitously "discovered", and then
haplessly maintained by McWatters to have been the "shot in the temple"
man--the lad was obviously not that man, and McWatters had no overt reason
of his own to say that Jones was that man. The ones who did have reason
were the ones who wanted to pin two murders on Oswald, not just the one
for which he was, I believe, responsible....
Perhaps, in fact, they were the ones of which Roy Milton Jones was
speaking here, in his FBI interview (page 4):
"[Jones] said that, in conversation with this same bus driver on the
following Monday, the driver told him the Dallas Police Department had him
up until one o'clock on Saturday or Sunday morning questioning him about
the passenger on his bus who looked like Lee Harvey Oswald."