What evidence (witnesses, photos, police radio) places Lee Harvey Oswald leaving the TSBD and heading toward the Texas Theatre on November 22 1963?
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Executive summary
The documentary record places Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) on the morning of November 22, 1963 and later in the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff, but the chain of evidence tying his departure from the TSBD directly to his arrival at the theatre is built from multiple kinds of evidence—employee eyewitnesses and building-entry testimony, the Warren Commission’s reconstruction of his movements and physical evidence linking him to the sixth-floor sniper’s perch, Broadway-area civilian witnesses who followed him into the theater, police arrest photographs and internal police reports—while contested eyewitness reports and alternative theories about other comings and goings complicate the narrative [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. TSBD presence and timing: forensic and coworker testimony places Oswald on the sixth floor before the shooting
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald was the person at the sixth-floor window from which the shots were fired and relied on physical evidence—ranging from the paper bag found near the window, palmprint and fiber analyses tying Oswald to the rifle and to cartons on the sixth floor, and the long brown paper package he had brought into the building that morning—to place him in the Depository building in the minutes leading up to the assassination [2]. TSBD coworkers’ accounts that employees went downstairs for lunch while Oswald remained upstairs are recorded in contemporary compilations and subsequent reporting, which note that several employees “raced” the freight elevators to the first floor around noon and that Oswald was the lone employee who did not leave the sixth floor with them, a fact the Commission considered when reconstructing his location near the time of the shooting [1] [2].
2. The escape timeline after the motorcade: Tippit’s shooting and Oswald’s movement through Oak Cliff
Within roughly 45 minutes after the assassination the fatal shooting of Patrolman J. D. Tippit occurred, and the Warren Commission placed Oswald as the man who shot Tippit and then continued walking through Oak Cliff toward Jefferson Boulevard and the Texas Theatre [2] [3]. Local civilian witnesses described seeing a man matching the radio description of Tippit’s killer loitering and moving along Jefferson Street, discarding a coat and entering the Texas Theatre; shoe-store manager John (Johnny) Brewer reported following the suspicious man into the theater and alerting theater staff [4] [7]. These civilian observations form the primary chain linking Oswald’s flight from Tippit’s location to his entry into the Texas Theatre [4] [7].
3. Theater entry, alert and arrest: manager and staff testimony plus police photos and reports
The Texas Theatre’s internal witnesses and staff statements record that a man entered without paying during the afternoon showing; box-office attendant Julia Postal and manager accounts say staff identified and reported him to police, and Warren-era photographic evidence and police arrest reports document Oswald being detained in the theater’s balcony and being escorted out in custody—color and black-and-white police photos of Oswald at the Texas Theatre and the revolver found on him are preserved in archival collections [8] [5] [6]. The theater’s historical accounts place his entry roughly between 1:00 and 1:45 p.m., which aligns with the timeline from Tippit’s shooting to his arrest [8] [4].
4. Radio broadcasts and police action: description but limited public transcript evidence in supplied sources
Contemporary accounts and theater testimony refer to a radio description of the Tippit suspect being broadcast and noticed by store managers who then followed the suspect into the theater; sources in the collection mention that the man matched the description being broadcast over the radio, but the specific police radio transcripts or timing logs that would tightly close the loop between the TSBD departure and the theater entry are not contained in the supplied materials, leaving a gap between broadcast description and precise movement timing in these sources [4] [7].
5. Disputes, alternative eyewitnesses and unresolved gaps
Contradictory eyewitness claims and conspiracy-oriented reconstructions complicate the straightforward narrative: some witnesses and later writers insist a lookalike left the Depository in a car at about 12:40 p.m., and critics note that the Warren Commission did not pursue all alternative leads cited by those witnesses [9] [10]. While the official record—employee testimony about Oswald remaining upstairs, forensic links to the sixth floor, the Tippit shooting and civilian tracking into the Texas Theatre, plus police arrest photographs—forms the basis for saying Oswald left the TSBD area and later was in the Texas Theatre, the chain of direct contemporaneous physical evidence tying each step together (for example, continuous surveillance, an uninterrupted radio-log-to-observer chain) is not fully presented in the supplied reporting [2] [5] [6] [4].