Helen
Markham, the daughter of a farmer, was born in Dallas. When she was
six years old her mother died and went to with her aunt. She married
young but the marriage was not a success. After he divorce she became
a waitress in Dallas.
On
22nd November, 1963, Markham was in the Oak Cliff area when she saw
Officer J.
D. Tippit killed.
She later described
the killer as being short and somewhat on the heavy side, with slightly
bushy hair." Later, Markham identified Lee
Harvey Oswald in a police lineup, but this was after she had seen
his photograph on television.
Although
considered the star witness, her testimony was full of mistakes. She
said he was alive when the ambulance arrived, but the other witnesses
say he died immediately. She also falsely claimed that for the first
twenty minutes she was the only person to attend the body. Once again,
the other witnesses disagreed with her.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Anthony
Summers,
The Kennedy Conspiracy (1980)
The star witness to the
shooting was Mrs. Helen Markham, a Dallas waitress. She was supposedly
the only person to see the shooting in its entirety. The official
version accepted her as "reliable" and credited her with
watching the initial confrontation between Tippit and his murderer
peeping fearfully through her fingers as the murderer loped away and
thus being able to identify Oswald at a police lineup. Yet this "reliable"
witness made more nonsensical statements than can reasonably be catalogued
here. She said she talked to Tippit and he understood her until he
was loaded into an ambulance. All the medical evidence, and other
witnesses, say Tippit died instantly from the head wound. A witness
who also saw the shooting - from his pickup truck - and then got out
to help the policeman, put it graphically: "He was lying there
and he had - looked like a big clot of blood coming out of his head,
and his eyes were sunk back in his head.... The policeman, I believe,
was dead when he hit the ground." Mrs. Markham said it was twenty
minutes before others gathered at the scene of the crime. That is
clearly nonsense. Within minutes men were in Tippit's car calling
for help on the police radio, and a small crowd was there when the
ambulance arrived three minutes later, at 1:10 p.m. Mrs. Markham is
credited with recognizing Oswald within three
hours at the police station. It turns out that she was so hysterical
at the police station
that only after ammonia was administered could she go
into the lineup room. When she appeared before the Commission Mrs.
Markham repeatedly said she had been unable to recognize anyone at
the lineup and changed her tune only after pressure from counsel.
The star witness
in the Tippit shooting was best summed up by Joseph Ball senior
counsel to the Warren Commission itself. In 1964 he referred in a
public debate to her testimony as being "full of mistakes"
and to Mrs Markham as an "utter screwball." He dismissed
her as "utterly unreliable," the exact opposite of the Report's
verdict.
(2)
Ian
Griggs, Fair
Play Magazine, Did
Howard Leslie Brennan Really Attend an Identification Lineup?
(May, 1999)
The first
lineup was convened less than three and a half hours after the murder
of Patrolman J D Tippit. Its purpose was to give 47-year old Dallas
waitress Mrs Helen Louise Markham the opportunity to pick out the
man she claimed to have seen shoot the officer. I will point out here
that there are problems establishing the exact times of all these
lineups. In each case, I will use the time given in the official DPD
investigation file 15. According to that document, this lineup was
held at 4.35pm.
As on all
three lineups on Friday 22nd, Oswald selected the no. 2 position in
the four-man lineup and was handcuffed to the man on either side of
him. His companions were Acting Detective Perry (no.1), Detective
Clark (no. 3) and Jail Clerk Don Ables (no.4).
When Mrs Markham had been
brought in and was in position on the other side of the one-way nylon
screen, each man was asked to step forward and state his name and
place of employment. Perhaps significantly, only Oswald was truthful
here. The three DPD employees (by their own admission in their later
sworn testimony), each gave fictitious answers. Oswald was the only
one of the four with facial injuries; he had been named and shown
on TV that afternoon and it had also been broadcast that his place
of employment was believed to be the source of the attack on Kennedy.
In view of those facts, it cannot be claimed that everything was being
arranged with scrupulous fairness to the suspect!
As for the witness, she
was hardly in a fit state to undertake the responsible task of identifying
(or not identifying, as the case may be) the killer of Patrolman Tippit.
Homicide Detective L. C. Graves, one of those organising the lineup,
said that she was "quite hysterical" and "crying and
upset" and there was even talk of her being sent to hospital.
In his testimony, Captain Fritz stated: "We were trying to get
that showup as soon as we could because she was beginning to faint
and getting sick. In fact I had to leave the office and carry some
ammonia across the hall, they were about to send her to the hospital
or something and we needed that identification real quickly, and she
got to feeling all right after using this ammonia."
According to the Warren
Report, Mrs Markham "identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man
who shot the policeman" 18. The Report also stated that "in
testimony before the Commission, Mrs Markham confirmed her positive
identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man she saw kill Officer
Tippit".
Sylvia Meagher, in Accessories
After the Fact, argued that the testimony of this alleged eyewitness
to the shooting of Tippit by Oswald, lacks any semblance of credibility
20. Several members of the Warren Commission staff have subsequently
voiced their opinions of Mrs Markham's value as a witness. Assistant
Counsel Liebeler has described her testimony as "contradictory
and worthless" 21, whilst Assistant Counsel Ball described her
as "an utter screwball".
Norman Redlich, another
Warren Commission staff member, is quoted as saying "The Commission
wants to believe Mrs Markham and that's all there is to it."
23. I think this remark is very important since Mrs Markham was the
only witness who ever claimed to have actually seen Tippit being shot.
Like it or not, the investigators were stuck with her! If she had
announced that the Earth was flat, they would have been hard-pressed
not to believe her!
What the Warren Report
does not divulge about the testimony of its star Tippit witness is
the fact that she required considerable prompting concerning her identification
of Oswald. In her testimony, she initially stated six times that she
recognised nobody in the lineup. Tiring of this, Assistant Counsel
Ball unashamedly produced one of the most amazing leading questions
ever asked: "Was there a number two man in there?" After
a few similar questions, he managed to get her to say "I asked...
I looked at him. When I saw this man I wasn't sure but I had cold
chills run all over me ... when I saw the man. But I wasn't sure."
(3)
Helen Markham interviewed by William Ball for the Warren
Commission
(26th March, 1964)
William Ball: What
did you notice then?
Helen Markham:
Well, I noticed a police car coming.
William Ball:
Where was the police car when you first saw it?
Helen Markham:
He was driving real slow, almost up to this man, well, say this man,
and he kept, this man kept walking, you know, and the police car going
real slow now, real slow, and they just kept coming into the curb,
and finally they got way up there a little ways up, well, it stopped.
William Ball:
The police car stopped?
Helen Markham:
Yes, sir.
William Ball:
What about the man? Was he still walking?
Helen Markham:
The man stopped.
William Ball:
Then what did you see the man do?
Helen Markham:
I saw the man come over to the car very slow, leaned and put his arms
just like this, he leaned over in this window and looked in this window.
William Ball:
He put his arms on the window ledge?
Helen Markham:
The window was down.
William Ball:
It was?
Helen Markham:
Yes, sir.
William Ball:
Put his arms on the window ledge?
Helen Markham:
On the ledge of the window.
William Ball:
And the policeman was sitting where?
Helen Markham:
On the driver's side.
William Ball:
He was sitting behind the wheel?
Helen Markham:
Yes, sir.
William Ball:
Was he alone in the car?
Helen Markham:
Yes.
William Ball:
Then what happened?
Helen Markham:
Well, I didn't think nothing about it; you know, the police are nice
and friendly, and I thought friendly conversation. Well, I looked,
and there were cars coming, so I had to wait. Well, in a few minutes
this man made--
William Ball:
What did you see the policeman do?
Helen Markham:
See the policeman? Well, this man, like I told you, put his arms up,
leaned over, he just a minute, and he drew back and he stepped back
about two steps. Mr. Tippit..
William Ball:
The policeman?
Helen Markham:
The policeman calmly opened the car door, very slowly, wasn't angry
or nothing, he calmly crawled out of this car, and I still just thought
a friendly conversation, maybe disturbance in the house, I did not
know; well, just as the policeman got
William Ball:
Which way did he walk?
Helen Markham:
Towards the front of the car. And just as he had gotten even with
the wheel on the driver's side...
William Ball:
You mean the left front wheel?
Helen Markham:
Yes; this man shot the policeman.
William Ball:
You heard the shots, did you?
Helen Markham:
Yes, sir.
William Ball:
How many shots did you hear?
Helen Markham:
Three.
William Ball:
What did you see the policeman do?
Helen Markham:
He fell to the ground, and his cap went a little ways out on the street.
William Ball:
What did the man do?
Helen Markham:
The man, he just walked calmly, fooling with his gun.
William Ball:
Toward what direction did he walk?
Helen Markham:
Come back towards me, turned around, and went back.
William Ball:
Toward Patton?
Helen Markham:
Yes, sir; towards Patton. He didn't run. It just didn't scare him
to death. He didn't run. When he saw me he looked at me, stared at
me. I put my hands over my face like this, closed my eyes. I gradually
opened my fingers like this, and I opened my eyes, and when I did
he started off in kind of a little trot.
William Ball:
Did anybody tell you that the man you were looking for would be in
a certain position in the lineup, or anything like that?
Helen Markham:
No, sir.
William Ball:
Now when you went
into the room you looked these people over, these four men?
Helen Markham:
Yes, sir.
William Ball:
Did you recognize anyone in the lineup?
Helen Markham:
No, sir.
William Ball:
You did not? Did you see anybody - I have asked you that question
before did you recognize anybody from their face?
Helen Markham:
From their face, no.
William Ball:
Did you identify anybody in these four people?
Helen Markham:
I didn't know nobody.
William Ball:
I know you didn't know anybody, but did anybody in that lineup look
like anybody you had seen before?
Helen Markham:
No. I had never seen none of them, none of these men.
William Ball:
No one of the four?
Helen Markham:
No one of them.
William Ball:
No one of all four?
Helen Markham:
No, sir.
William Ball:
Was there a number two man in there?
Helen Markham: Number
two is the one I picked.
William Ball: Well, I thought
you just told me that you hadn't...
Helen Markham: I thought
you wanted me to describe their clothing.
William Ball: No. I wanted
to know if that day when you were in there if you saw anyone in there...
Helen Markham: Number two.
William Ball: What did
you say when you saw number two?
Helen Markham: Well, let
me tell you. I said the second man, and they kept asking me which
one, which one. I said, number two. When I said number two, I just
got weak.
William Ball: What about
number two, what did you mean when you said number two?
Helen Markham: Number two
was the man I saw shoot the policeman.
William Ball: You recognized
him from his appearance?
Helen Markham: I asked
- I looked at him. When I saw this man I wasn't sure, but I had cold
chills just run all over me.
William Ball: When you
saw him?
Helen Markham: When I saw
the man. But I wasn't sure, so, you see, I told them I wanted to be
sure, and looked, at his face is what I was looking at, mostly is
what I looked at, on account of his eyes, the way he looked at me.
So I asked them if they would turn him sideways. They did, and then
they turned him back around, and I said the second, and they said,
which one, and I said number two. So when I said that, well, I just
kind of fell over. Everybody in there, you know, was beginning to
talk, and I don't know, just...
William Ball: Did you recognize
him from his clothing?
Helen Markham: He had on
a light short jacket, dark trousers. I looked at his clothing, but
I looked at his face, too.
William Ball: Did he have
the same clothing on that the man had that you saw shoot the officer?
Helen Markham: He had,
these dark trousers on.
William Ball: Did he have
a jacket or a shirt? The man that you saw shoot Officer Tippit and
run away, did you notice if he had a jacket on?
Helen Markham: He had a
jacket on when he done it.
William Ball: What kind
of a jacket, what general color of jacket?
Helen Markham: It was a
short jacket open in the front, kind of a grayish tan.
William Ball: Did you tell
the police that?
Helen Markham: Yes, I did.
William Ball: Did any man
in the lineup have a jacket on?
Helen Markham: I can't
remember that.
William Ball: Did this
number two man that you mentioned to the police have any jacket on
when he was in the lineup?
Helen Markham: No, sir.
William Ball: What did
he have on?
Helen Markham: He had on
a light shirt and dark trousers.
William Ball: Did you recognize the man from his clothing or from
his face?
Helen Markham: Mostly from
his face.
William Ball: Were you
sure it was the same man you had seen before?
Helen Markham: I am sure.
Available from Amazon
Books (order below)
