Even if one accepts the official story that it was Lee Harvey Oswald who shot Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit after the JFK killing, there is still one baffling question that remains unanswered: Why did Tippit stop Oswald on the street in the first place?
The Warren Commission concluded it was because Oswald fit the description of the suspected Kennedy assassin that had gone out over the police radio.
Okay, that sort of makes sense when you first hear it. Except – upon examination of the facts – it makes no sense at all.
The police description broadcast that day was for an: “Unknown white male, approximately 30, 165 pounds, slender build…no further information or description at this time.” That general description clearly matched much of the male population of Dallas. (and didn’t exactly match Oswald). So why did Tippit – seeing a man simply walking down a street in the middle of the day miles from the assassination site – decide to stop him as a possible suspect?
There are also many questions about where the police description – vague as it was – ever came from. Many believe it was based on a witness, Howard Brennan, who claimed to have seen a man in the sixth floor window at the time of the assassination. But other accounts say the description came from an unidentified source who said he saw an unidentified man running from the Book Depository after the shots were fired. No official basis for the police broadcast of that early description was ever confirmed.
What does all of this mean? I have no idea. Oswald and Tippit were the only people who really knew the circumstances that brought them together on that fateful afternoon. All the rest is just speculation. Maybe Oswald did something, said something to make Tippit suspicious - or maybe it wasn't even Oswald at all that shot him.
But I do know that the official version of the Oswald/Tippit encounter just doesn’t add up to me.
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