Oswald’s Jacket
Approximately 15 minutes before the shooting, Oswald was observed leaving his roominghouse wearing a zipper jacket he had not worn upon arriving home. At arrest he was in shirt sleeves, and shortly after the killing a light-colored zipper jacket was found along the escape route on Jefferson Boulevard by Captain Westbrook, who located it beneath a car in a parking lot behind a service station. Marina Oswald identified it as her husband’s second jacket (a gray jacket; the blue one was found at the Texas School Book Depository). Witnesses varied in their descriptions of the jacket’s shade, but the Commission’s finding was that Oswald discarded the jacket while fleeing.
Conclusion
The Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Patrolman J.D. Tippit, based on four findings: (1) two eyewitnesses to the shooting and seven eyewitnesses to the gunman’s flight positively identified Oswald; (2) cartridge cases from the scene were fired from the revolver in Oswald’s possession, to the exclusion of all other weapons; (3) the revolver belonged to Oswald; and (4) Oswald’s jacket was recovered along the gunman’s path of flight.
Oswald’s Arrest
The Texas Theatre sits approximately eight blocks from the Tippit shooting scene and six blocks from where Oswald was last seen running west on Jefferson. Johnny Calvin Brewer, manager of Hardy’s Shoestore near the theater, heard police sirens and observed a man standing in the recessed lobby of his store. After a police car made a U-turn and the sirens faded, the man—who wore a T-shirt beneath his outer shirt and no jacket—looked over his shoulder and walked west on Jefferson toward the theatre. Brewer described the man as having disheveled hair, appearing as though he had been running, looking scared.
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