Kirk

JFK GeoTour
#10 Officer Tippit Murder site
402 E 10th St, Dallas, TX 75203

On November 22, 1963, Officer JD Tippit was working beat number 78, his normal patrol area in south Oak Cliff, a residential area of the city. At 12:45 p.m., 15 minutes after the assassination of President Kennedy, Officer Tippit received a radio order to move to the central Oak Cliff area as part of a concentration of police around the center of the city. At 12:54, Officer Tippit radioed that he had moved as directed. By then, several messages had been broadcast describing a suspect in the assassination as a slender white male, about 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, and weighing about 165 pounds.

At approximately 1:13 p.m., Officer Tippit was driving slowly eastward on East 10th Street when, about 100 feet past the intersection of 10th Street and Patton Avenue, he pulled alongside Lee Harvey Oswald, who was walking in the same direction. Oswald, who resembled the broadcast description, walked over to the car and apparently exchanged words with Officer Tippit through the open vent window. Officer Tippit opened the door on the left side and started to walk around the front of his car. As Officer Tippit reached the front wheel on the driver's side, Oswald drew a revolver and fired several shots in rapid succession, hitting Officer Tippit three times in the chest. Oswald then walked up to Officer Tippit's fallen body and shot him directly in the head, killing him instantly. DPD squad car #10 was found on the street between 402 and 406 East 10th Street.

The Warren Commission interviewed 12 people who either witnessed the murder or its immediate aftermath. One witness watched Oswald shoot and kill Officer Tippit, then saw him flee the scene with the gun still in his hand. This witness, along with at least three others, picked him out of a lineup that same night. Two other ladies did not see the shooting, but watched Oswald shake the spent cartridges out of his handgun as he fled across their yard. They found two of the cartridges on the ground, which were later matched to the gun in Oswald’s possession when he was arrested minutes later. Both the Warren Commission and the 1979 findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that Oswald shot and killed Officer Tippit.

Today, the house at 402 East 10th Street, that was in the background of the crime scene photo, is long gone. In fact, it's been recently rebuilt from the ground up. It took 49 years for the historical marker at Patton & East 10th Streets to finally be erected to recognize that an officer was killed in the line of duty at this location.

JFK GeoTour
#9 Oswald Boarding House
1026 N Beckley Ave, Dallas, TX 75203

Lee Harvey Oswald first came to stay at this boarding house on October 14th, 1963. The house has since gotten a lot of attention considering Oswald lived there for less than 6 weeks. The interest in the residence is largely due to Oswald’s return to the house immediately after his assassination of President Kennedy. After discharging 3 shots and ditching his rifle down the hall from his sniper nest on the 6th floor of the Book School Depository, Oswald left the building and headed east into Dallas towards a bus stop. After a brief bus ride of only a block since the traffic was at a standstill and not moving westward towards Dealey Plaza, he got out and walked several blocks until he was able to flag down a taxi for the first taxi ride of his life. He directed the taxi to take him several blocks away from the house and walked the rest of the way. Upon his return to his room, he gathered up his handgun and remaining cash and soon headed out again on foot. Before he got far, he attracted the attention of Police Officer JD Tippit who pulled over in his police cruiser to investigate his suspicions.

Oswald rented his room in this house under the alias, O. H. Lee. For $8 per week he got a very small bedroom with a small metal framed twin bed and a dresser. He also had refrigerator and living room privileges. The location turned out to be very convenient when the next day, he applied for and received his job at the Texas School Book Depository, which gave him his access to the 6th floor window the day the Presidential motorcade wound down Elm Street, right next to his perch. The job as an “order filler” paid him minimum wage ($1.25/hr) and began the day after he applied.

The owner who rented the room to Oswald was Gladys Johnson, who lived there with her granddaughter (Pat Hall, the current owner) and 2 grandsons. Mrs. Hall is offering tours of Oswald’s bedroom and the common areas for $20 a person. It is common to see JFK tour buses drive by. As the buses stop at the red light in front of the house, bus patrons look toward the house (many of them probably looking for new clues), which hilariously gets most of the other drivers at the light looking over their right shoulders to see what all the fuss is about.

JFK GeoTour
#8 Dallas Trade Mart
2100 Stemmons Freeway, Dallas, TX 75207

After the motorcade on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was scheduled to speak at a sold out crowd of 2,600 people for $2,000 a plate luncheon. This was the only stop on his two-day Texas trip that was classified as a political fundraiser. Instead of driving into the Trade Mart for this luncheon speech, his limousine sped on by, headed straight to Parkland. Like the rest of the nation, it took the people awaiting the President in the Trade Mart’s Grand Courtyard quite some time to figure out exactly what was happening. As news filtered in slowly, the crowd gathered into small groups trying to sort fact from fiction; news from unconfirmed rumors.

The Trade Mart is part of the Dallas Market Center, which also features the World Trade Center, the International Trade Plaza, and Market Hall. The center was begun in 1957 by Trammell Crow, and was last expanded in 1999. It does about $8 billion of business each year, providing the local Dallas economy with tax revenues of nearly $400 million.

In remembrance of this planned speech, English sculptor, Elisabeth Fink made a bronze eagle sculpture that sits atop a small pedestal just outside the entrance of the Trade Mart.

JFK GeoTour
#7 Parkland Hospital
5200 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, TX 75235

Immediately after President Kennedy was shot, he was whisked northwards up I-35. The limousine sped right past the Trade Mart, where some of the luncheon crowd awaiting his arrival, looked on curiously as the President's vehicle didn't pull into the entrance but quickly drove on past. While Vice President Lyndon Johnson's driver initially drove to the hospital by a different route to avoid the possibility of additional trouble, the President was taken straight to Parkland where he was carried to Trauma Room 1. On the trip, both Jackie Kennedy and the Secret Service agent in the back of the car, noted the gruesomeness of the scene, and that the President could only lay limp in the back seat with his eyes wide open. The famous video footage of Jackie climbing back onto the trunk right after the final shot while still on Elm Street, documents the bizarre vision of her retrieving a large portion of the President's skull. As horrible as this was, she gave this and some contiguous matter to the doctors as soon as they arrived to the hospital.

Upon reaching Parkland, the President had essentially bled out from his head wound. He had no blood pressure upon arrival. Other than brain stem mediated agonal repiratory sounds, and a single instance where a doctor believed that he found a pulse in one leg, the President had no signs of life upon arrival. With the severity of his injuries, saving his life was not possible, even with today's medical technology.

Although there are separate definitions for clinical death, legal death, and religious death, President Kennedy was unconscious as soon as the bullet hit him in the head, such that he never knew he had been hit, and for all practical purposes, was no longer living long before reaching Parkland. The nation was fixed to their television sets and transistor radios waiting for word of President Kennedy's condition from the moment they found out that he had been shot. While the gunfire occurred around 12:30, it took until 1pm until he reached Parkland and resuscitative efforts were abandoned and he was pronounced dead. The news media waited until this announcement to tell the nation. Even though several eyewitnesses very close to the limousine during the gunfire described catastrophic injuries to the President, the news media and the nation was still stunned at the announcement. The President was dead.

JFK GeoTour
#6 Dealey Plaza
400 Main St, Dallas, TX 75202

Entering Dealey Plaza in the open Presidential limousine, Nellie Connally, wife of the Texas Governor, turned to President Kennedy and told him, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.” Within seconds of turning onto Elm Street, the mood abruptly changed as they were under attack within seconds. The first bullet that hit any of the occupants in the Presidential limousine struck the President in the upper back and neck, striking his spine and the top of his right lung. The bullet exited his throat, grazing the knot in his tie. He can clearly be seen raising his elbows, clenching his fists, and leaning forward and to the left in response to this shot. The same bullet is the only one that injured Texas Governor John Connally, who was sitting in the middle jump seat just in front of the President. The bullet entered under his right armpit and destroyed a rib and created a sucking chest wound, which is a serious life-threatening injury that requires urgent care. After exiting through the front of his chest, the bullet shattered one of the two bones in his right forearm before lodging in his right thigh. Connally shouted out, “my God, they’re going to kill us all!” The very next shot was the fatal head shot to President Kennedy. The gruesomeness from the final shot left little doubt to anyone close to the event as to the outcome for the President.

The limousine quickly departed the scene heading straight for Parkland. The President’s final wound was fatal and beyond the scope of any medical aid. Governor Connally, however, was in urgent need of first aid for his chest wound, and further evaluation and care for his other injuries.

Back inside the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald quickly hid his rifle down the hall from his 6th floor perch and headed down towards the exits. He was met on the 2nd floor in the break room by an armed police officer. Roy Truly, Oswald’s supervisor, identified him as an employee, and the officers moved on, continuing their search of the building. Later Truly reported him missing to the police, which helped to quickly locate and arrest Oswald.