Welcome to JFK and The Enduring Secret.

I'm your host, Jeff Crudell.

Dallas Patrol. Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippett's actions on November 22nd, 1963 were by any measure erratic. He abandoned his assigned beat after the JFK assassination,

and he conducted a tense vigil at the Glocow filling station, watching the main

escape route from Daly Plaza, apparently hunting for a specific quarry.

This erratic behavior, along with his other movements that morning, led to a chaotic chase

and a desperate, unanswered phone call, just minutes before his death.

Ultimately, Tippett's unexplained connections and his movements lead us to three theories.

Either he was an innocent victim who ran into a killer that day,

or perhaps a targeted victim lured to his execution as part of a plot to frame Oswald.

But maybe neither of those theories are true.

And Tippett himself, maybe he is a co-conspirator who was silenced, making his death the Rosetta Stone to the broader assassination plot.

This confounding set of alternatives is what makes this entire case an enduring secret.

And so now it's time to learn more about this man, J.D. Tippett, and especially his movements

that day in Dallas. So let's listen to the rest of episode 299 of

JFK, The Enduring Secret.

John Davis Tippett, J.D., to those who knew him, was born in 1924 near Anona, Texas,

where the clay-filled fields of the 1920s and the 30s shaped a childhood of grit and scarcity.

He was raised on a farm during the lean years of the Great Depression.

J.D.'s formal education ended after the 10th grade. But his courage carried him far beyond the classroom. When World War II erupted, he volunteered as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army, hurling himself

into the chaos of Operation

Varsity in Germany, where he earned a bronze star for bravery. But the war left scars deeper

...