TSBD to Oak Cliff

[Geoff Johnstone]

One area of the JFK assassination that I think is taken for granted by many people is Lee Harvey Oswald's supposed journey from the TSBD to his rooming house.

3 witnesses were relied on for this....Cecil McWatters, William Whaley and Earlene Roberts. Its seems obvious to me that Whaley lied constantly and changed his story to suit the the official version at every opportunity. Cecil McWatters seems to be describing the younger, Roy Milton Jones as his passenger. Earlene Roberts may be the only one telling the truth about Lee going to the rooming house.

Roberts and Whaley died before Garrison could use them as witnesses (should he have wanted to) but does anyone know how and when McWatters died? Roberts and Whaley died withing 3 weeks of each other in late 65 and early 66. I was wondering if McWatters lived a long and full life

[fobrien1]

hi geoffrey thanks for posting and joining us , its an honor to have a person of your undoubted knowledgeable and research in this case here with us .

indeed the time between 12.30 and about 1.45 are of great importance , and there is far more to this area of time than the official version of events and the media wants us to know .

Born    March 29, 1918 in Texas, USA
Died    February 5, 1995 in Dallas, Texas, USA
Birth Name   Cecil Joffrey McWatters


Cecil J. McWatters was born on March 29, 1918 in Texas, USA as Cecil Joffrey McWatters. He died on February 5, 1995 in Dallas, Texas.

as far as i am aware this is the same cecil mcwatters geoffrey .


whalley certainly as a witness was problematic . he saw a picture of oswald i believe in the paper before he went to the line ups , that is a problem in terms of his identification . he was shown pictures before going into the line up , i believe from memory atleast two of 3 were of oswald and he failed to identify oswald from them . he picked the wrong photo .

while in the line up and by his own admission it was patently obvious that oswald was the suspect . they were putting oswald who looked about 30 in a line up with 3 teen boys one of whom was latino DARK SKINNED . this is a line up that jim leavelle says was CONDUCTED FAIRLY AND PROPERLY lol .

naturally oswald complained loudly about this . even whalley said THEY WERE RAILROADING HIM . and cab driver scoggins was stood next to whalley at that time , so one witness could influence another . scoggins was back around the corner on patton , thats back along the street where tippit was shot and around the corner to the left . he had bushes obscuring his view and when he did get a bit of a view of the man he by his own admission only saw him from behind .

for the above reasons alone (there are other problems with whalley ) the identifications by whalley and scoggins are in my view very problematic for the above reasons and more . that said whalley didnt identify oswald in regard either murder . only that oswald boarded his cab .

mcwatters went to the line ups thinking he was identifying passenger roy milton jones . the bus was stopped in traffic and going nowhere , and when a man nocked on the bus door to tell the driver / passengers about jfks shooting jones rather stupidly smirked / laughed and made comments . these actions were falsely attributed to oswald . but it was in fact jones .

mcwatters said he gave out (from memory ) two transfers , one to a woman and the other to a young man , roy milton jones was given a transfer if my memory serves me right . sorry i dont have all this information to hand so i have to go a bit by memory , usually its pretty reliable but i can make the odd error . so mcwatters went to the line ups and never identified oswald , the reason was because he thought he was there to identify the young man he had seen which was roy jones .

jones also never identified oswald as being on the bus . both did however say that the man they saw wore a jacket , whalley said the man he saw get in his cab wore a jacket . back at the depository frazier told gary mack that he saw oswald leaving , having came from the rear of the building , the loading bay area , and that he saw him cross from one side of houston to the other and turn left at the daltex and go up elm street . he also said oswald was wearing a jacket .

now if all above 4 men are honest and telling the truth that they saw a man and that it was oswald well then all 4 men have oswald wearing a jacket . that then completely discredits mrs beldsoe who said oswald wore the brown shirt . not one witness placed her on mcwatters bus , and not one saw the man she saw , she said it was oswald with contorted angry face and wearing the brown shirt torn and ripped and with all buttons ripped from it . no other person saw this man . there is probably a very good reason for that , you see the damage to the shirt that bledsoe claimed to have seen at about 12.40pm would not occur until about 1.45 over an hour later .

LN play fast and loose with mrs roberts . on one hand citing her and saying she was reliable , while on the other hand they attack her reliability and credibility . this is the mentality we have to deal with every day . of course LN try and push the time that oswald came home back to about 12.55 . we know the warren commission and whalley ran time trials in his cab , and try as they could they could not get oswald to his rooming house any earlier than 1pm .

we know that roberts spoke to her neighbour and we know she put on the news on tv , and we know oswald arrived after that . so based on that we can fairly state that it was atleast 1pm when oswald arrived home . when roberts says oswald had no jacket LN like that SHE IS ULTRA RELIABLE , why ? because they have in A shirt , but not THE shirt . they need him in a shirt so that they can take bledoses word and dismiss the other 4 witnesses . this is how the LN mind works .

but when she says oswald stayed about 4 minutes in his room they dont believe her . they say she was wrong , but just in case she is not wrong they have a back up plan , they say oswald arrived at 12.55 . why ? well oswald has a 16 minute plus walk to 10th and patton where tippit was killed no later than 1.16 (in fact he was killed before that time )  ,  if they cant get oswald out of his rooming house at 1pm they know they have a problem . this is what you call making the facts fit the evidence , instead of the true evidence fitting the true known facts .

so oswald having arrived at 1pm stays in his room about 4 minutes and leaves . about a minute or so later mrs roberts gets up from her tv , walks to the window and sees oswald still there by the bus stop . that puts oswald still on north beckley a mile from tippit at 1.05pm . when she left the window she says oswald was still there . t f bowley arrived at 10th and patton shortly after the shooting , tippit was already down . he looked at his watch , the only witness to do so , his watch said 1.10pm . now if oswald on foot got to 10th and patton before 1.10 having still been on beckley a mile away at 1.05 well then i suggest that the military was the wrong career  option , he should have chosen athletics because at the sort of speed he would have had to have been moving i dare say he would have given usain bolt a run for his money .

i have another detailed post on the forum here that goes into the timing etc that may interest people .

[Geoff Johnstone]

Thanks for response fobrien1

I am glad he had a decent innings.

Whaley didnt just say the man in his cab wore a jacket, he first said he wore the grey jacket, then he said he wore either the grey jacket or the blue jacket before finally settling on the man wearing both jackets and the shirt. Very accommodating.

He was actually called twice because his first testimony didnt help the official version at all. In his first version he said he had a trial run with a policeman and did it 9 minutes because he went in a certain way that meant the lights were with him and that it meant he always did it 2 minutes quicker than the police ever could do it. He then stated the lights were with him when he took Oswald and it was typical time for the journey and he had been a cab driver for 37 years.

Like you say, that would be very awkward in getting Oswald there early enough so they called him back a few weeks later. This time they asked him how long it took and he suddenly managed to get the time down to just, "A little more than 5 minutes, between 5 and 6 minutes." That begs the question, who did he manage to knock off 3 to 4 minutes of the 9 minutes it always took him for 37 years? His original time was already 2 minutes faster than the police ever managed so his revised time was 5 to 6 minutes faster than the police could do it in. I dont believe that for a minute.

McWatters gave a woman a transfer too according to the official version, do you think the woman followed the other passenger (Oswald?) and was the same woman that poked her head in to the taxi?

[fobrien1]

well it does seem that mcwatters didnt meet with accident , he wasnt shot and killed mistaken for a deer lol . he didnt commit suicide by shooting himself in the head 3 times with a shotgun lol . sadly tho to be serious others were not so lucky , whalley i believe became the only taxi driver in dallas (in dallas history i think but i stand to be corrected ) to be killed while on duty . ok car crashes happen for sure , all it takes is one idiot not concentrating or drunk etc to cause a crash and kill innocent people . i dont know the exact details of whalleys death , if you have any further information id be very interested .

there are quite a few witnesses that would have looked just terrible on cross examination by oswalds lawyers had he lived and went to trial . mcwatters is one for sure , markham another . but the warren commission of course knew they could call who they wanted , believe what ever nonsense they came out with ESPECIALLY if it helped the lone nut official version of events . and im sure they truly believed back then that no one would ever question them let alone be researching . wasnt it dulles who said the american people dont read ? , which shows how they thought back then .

im aware with whalley that the commission ran time trials (they ran other time trials in the depository also ) and basically whalley was made to drive the route over and over and faster and faster untill they got the time down to something the commission could live with . they already knew that getting oswald to 10th and patton was a probelem , if they could get oswald to his rooming house by 12.55 that would help a lot . that it wasnt the truth didnt matter . whalley had to know the speed he was traveling at that day . if he had to drive faster than that speed in time trials (and they did have him go faster and faster each time ) that renders those time trials invalid .

i dont know who the woman you mention is geoffrey unless she is (OFFICIALLY ATLEAST ) mrs bledsoe . she is the only woman on the bus so far that i am aware of that the commission had an interest in . however im just going from memory so im not 100% certain on that . but i do know that mcwatters at the line ups believed he was there to identify roy milton jones . apparently he smirked/ laughed and made certain comments that some have tried to falsely attribute to oswald . the logic being if they say oswald was on the bus when they heard jfk was shot and that he laughed and made nasty comments that it makes him look guilty . problem for LN is that it was roy milton jones not oswald . talk soon

[Geoff Johnstone]

2 people supposedly got off the McWatters bus and got transfers. One was supposedly Oswald and the other was a woman. They supposedly got off at the same time. Then Oswald got the cab and a woman then opened the cab door and Whaley said he would call the woman a cab. I just wondered if the woman that got off the bus was the woman that tried to get that taxi. After all, she must have seen Oswald get in the cab as she approached it.

A lot of people died in RTAs, too many for it to be just coincidence. Same goes for all the very weird suicides and "accidental" deaths. LNers would never buy it if the 3 pathologists, Markham, Brennan and the Davis sisters all died in similar circumstances within a short period

[fobrien1]

the woman in question was an elderly lady , according to whalley she asked if she could take the cab . at that whalley said that oswald (SUPPOSEDLY IN A GREAT DASH TO ESCAPE ) motioned to get out of the cab and give it to the elderly lady . whalley said there was no need that another cab would be along any second . LNs dont mention this , for obvious reasons , they want to say oswald was in flight and in a hectic rush .

i dont know where the elderly lady came from , i dont think we even have her name , so bad was the so called investigation .

the transfer in oswalds shirt pocket has long bothered me . it is just a little slip of paper . we know multiples of officers pounced on oswald . we know they handled oswald so roughly that they tore all the buttons off the shirt and ripped it in places . the photo of oswald being removed from the theater shows the shirt being pulled in multiple directions . and that transfer emerges from oswalds shirt pocket like it just came out of the ticket machine PRISTINE ?? . the photos of it show it has no kicks , bends or wrinkles which i think is a virtual impossibility .