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Behind the Gemstone Files |
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The
Skeleton Key AUTHORSHIP ALPHA-1775 GEMSTONES A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z
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UPDATED
January 01, 2003 02:16 PM
Domingo Benavides, an auto mechanic, was witness to the murder of Officer Tippit. Benavides testified he got a "really good view of the slayer." Benavides said the killer resembled newspaper pictures of Oswald, but he described him differently, "I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline went square instead of tapered off . . ." The witness with the best view of the shooting, Domingo Benavides, at first said he could not identify the killer, and, incredibly, Benavides was not taken to a police lineup. Weeks later, Benavides's brother was shot--in mistake for him, according to Benavides and his father-in-law. When Benavides testified before the Warren Commission, he would only say that a picture of Oswald "bore a resemblance" to Tippit's killer, and he seemed to identify a dark jacket as the one the assailant had worn, whereas the Commission claimed the killer wore a light gray jacket. Only years later did Benavides make a "positive identification" of Oswald as the gunman. When Benavides was contacted a few years ago, he was hesitant to talk about the case, in part because he said he believed federal agents were monitoring his phone conversations. Benavides reported he was repeatedly threatened by the police who advised him not to talk about what he saw. In mid-February 1964, his brother Eddy, who resembled him, was fatally shot in the back of the head at a beer joint on Second Avenue in Dallas. The case was marked "unsolved." Benavides' father-in-law J.W. Jackson was not impressed by the investigation. He began his own inquiry. Two weeks later, J.W. Jackson was shot at in his home. As the gunman escaped, a police car came around the block. It made no attempt to follow the speeding car with the gunman. The police advised that Jackson should "lay off this business." "Don't go around asking questions; that's our job." Jackson and Benavides are both convinced that Eddy's murder was a case of mistaken identity and that Domingo Benavides, the Tippit witness, was the intended victim. Uncertainty about the Tippit ballistics evidence
grows with the revelation that Dallas policeman J.M. Poe, who took
custody of two shell casings on Nov. 22, was later unable to
identify them. Patrolman Poe was instructed by Sgt. Hill at the
scene to 'mark' two shells found by Domingo Benavides; Poe scratched
his initials on them to establish a chain of evidence: But seven
months later, FBI agents asked Poe to examine the four shells turned
over to the Warren Commission. The FBI report told the tale: Poe
"stated he recalled marking these cases... but he stated after
a thorough examination of the four cartridges shown to him on June
12, 1964, he cannot locate his marks; therefore, he cannot
positively identify any of these cartridges as being the same ones
he received from Benavides." contrary to the Warren Report's assertion that he
"rushed' to Tippit's car and "promptly" notified
police on Tippit's radio, eyewitness Domingo Benavides testified
that when the shooting began, he crouched down in the seat of his
pick-up truck and laid low for "a few minutes" because he
was afraid the gunman would reappear and start shooting again. Thus,
'a few minutes' elapsed between the shooting and the time police
were notified at 1:16 p.m. (Benavides first tried to aid the
mortally wounded officer before climbing into Tippit's squad car and
fumbling with the radio microphone, trying to figure out how it
worked. Contrary to the Report, which wrongly credited Benavides, it
was a bystander named F. Bowley who took the microphone from him and
called the dispatcher. Bowley's Nov. 22 affidavit said he came upon
the scene in his car, got out and intentionally looked at his watch
to note the time: 1:10 p.m. - another indication that "a few
minutes" - perhaps 5 or 6 - elapsed before Bowley called the
radio dispatcher). Domingo Benavides was the closest person to the shooting -- he said he was in his truck a mere 15 feet away -- yet he was not taken to any of the line-ups to see if he could identify the man. His Warren Commission appearance elicited only a tentative identification: he could say only that a picture of Oswald he saw on TV resembled the man who shot Tippit.
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