Mark Lane and Warren Reynolds
- Fred Litwin
- 11 minutes ago
- 7 min read
There is a segment in Rush to Judgment in which Penn Jones tells the story of Warren Reynolds.
Here is an excerpt from a transcript: (1:52:59)
Mark Lane: Can you give us one instance of a witness who died a strange death?
Penn Jones: Well, let's take the case of Betty Mooney MacDonald, one of Jack Ruby's strippers, A fellow named Warren Reynolds saw a man running from the scene of the Tippit slaying. Shortly thereafter, Reynolds was shot through the head. Now, before Reynolds was shot, he could not identify the man running from the scene as Oswald. Then he was shot through the head, and a fellow named Garner was arrested. Then MacDonald was the alibi for Garner. She said Garner could not have shot Reynolds because he was with me at the time, Two days after her alibi, Betty Mooney MacDonald was arrested for fighting with a roommate. Although the roommate was not arrested, MacDonald was put in jail that night, and an hour later, she was found hanged in her cell. And of course, the Dallas Police said she hung herself.
Mark Lane: Did Reynolds finally testify before the [Warren] Commission?
Penn Jones: After Reynolds recovered from his wound, he testified and was able to identify Oswald.
Mark Lane: Mr. Reynolds, where are you employed?
Warren Reynolds: At the Johnnie Reynolds Motor Company.
Mark Lane: And were you working there on November 22, 1963?
Warren Reynolds: Yes, sir.
Mark Lane: How close is the used car lot, which you work, to the scene of the Tippit killing?
Warren Reynolds: One block.
Mark Lane: Were you there at about one o'clock on the 22nd?
Warren Reynolds: Yes, sir.
Mark Lane: And then what happened? What did you see? What did you hear?
Warren Reynolds: We were listening to the radio about the assassination, and we heard these shots, and we ran out on this porch, and we saw this gunman running up the street, and I followed him for a block until I lost him, and then I was going back to the used car lot, and this policeman stopped me and asked me what had happened. And I told him that I had seen this man with a gun, and I had followed him, and I lost him. So, he took the description, my name and stuff like that. And while I was talking to him, some television camera was taking the pictures. And after that, I went on back to the used car lot.
Mark Lane: Were you questioned by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the United States Secret Service during November, 1963
Warren Reynolds: No, I sure wasn't.
Mark Lane: Were you questioned by FBI agents or Secret Service agents during December, 1963?
Warren Reynolds: No, sir.
Mark Lane: Were you questioned by FBI agents or Secret Service agents during January, '64?
Warren Reynolds: Yes, sir, I was.
Mark Lane: When was that, sir?
Warren Reynolds: That was on January the 21st. Two agents come out, and they talked to me and asked me what I had seen. And I told them, and they showed me three pictures.
Mark Lane: You were questioned by agents of the FBI on January 21, '64. Then what happened?
Warren Reynolds: Two days after that, as I was closing up the used car lot one night, when I went downstairs to turn off the lights, some gunman was hidden down there and he shot me. He shot me through the glasses, right here ... and the bullet lodged right over here,
Mark Lane: Mr. Reynolds, who knew about your questioning by the FBI between the time that you were actually questioned by them, and the time that you were shot two days later?
Warren Reynolds: Just friends, and of course, my family,
Mark Lane: The Commission concluded on page 663 of its Report that it was wild speculation for anyone to think that there might have been a connection between the fact that you were shot in January and the fact that you observed the gunman flee from the Tippit scene. What is your comment, sir?
Warren Reynolds: If they would catch the man, and prove that he that he did do it, we could figure out from there whether he was connected or not. And until then, I don't believe anybody is smart enough to say whether there is connection or not.
Isn't strange that Mark Lane does not ask Warren Reynolds if the man he saw fleeing the Tippit shooting was, in fact, Lee Harvey Oswald. The whole crux of the story is his supposed non-identification of Oswald and his changed testimony. Why wouldn't you straighten this out with Reynolds sitting right there?
In fact, Mark Lane DID ask Reynolds about the man fleeing the shooting.
Lane leaves out "and I identified the pictures as the man I knew then as Lee Harvey Oswald. And I identified 'em and they left."
And then Lane asked Reynolds about the statement in the Warren Report that "Reynolds did not make a positive identification when interview by the FBI. What is your comment upon that?"
This was also left out of Rush to Judgment.
My point here is not to use Warren Reynolds as a witness who identified Oswald but to show Mark Lane's intellectual dishonesty.
Now, let's go back and set the record straight.
In the six weeks prior to Betty MacDonald's suicide, she had tried twice to kill herself. Here is what Dale Myer's says about her in his book, Beyond Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J. D. Tippit: (page 606 in the Kindle edition)
On February 13, 1964, Nancy Jane Mooney got into a brawl with her roommate Patsy Moore over the affections of a man. Mooney, also known as Betty MacDonald, was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. After being placed in a cell at the Dallas City Jail, Mooney took off her toreador slacks and hanged herself. Police learned that Mooney had attempted suicide twice during the past six weeks. The first attempt was by gas in her bathroom, the second by slashing her wrists. Mooney had exhibited numerous scars on her wrists and stomach to a friend stating, “she had done that to herself.”
Patsy Moore told police that Nancy Jane Mooney had four children who were being cared for by Nancy’s mother in Paris, Texas. The children had been taken away from Nancy, which caused her to be very despondent at times. Moore also stated that Nancy claimed to have been a former striptease girl working at various bars in Dallas, including Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club. Mooney had told police the same thing herself during an earlier interview. However, police interviews with George Senator, Ruby’s former roommate, and with employees of the Carousel Club failed to support Mooney’s claim.
So, it doesn't appear that MacDonald was a stripper at Ruby's club The Carousel.
Clearly, Mr. Reynolds memory could not have improved and so that is why some assassination researchers don't include them in their list of people who identified Lee Harvey Oswald in the Tippit killing.
Reynolds initially thought there might have been a connection between the assassination of JFK and the attempt on his life. But, no evidence has ever surfaced to link the two. Vincent Bugliosi, in Reclaiming History, says this is all nonsense: (page 4029 in the Kindle edition)
A shot in the temple can only be calculated to kill. What group of conspirators would have any reason to kill someone who, at that time, hadn’t made a positive identification of Oswald? And even if we assume that a positive identification was, indeed, the standard that qualified someone to be murdered by the conspirators, and the conspirators thought Reynolds had positively identified Oswald, out of the many people who did, why was Reynolds the only one whom they tried to kill? Further, I thought the conspirators were trying to frame Oswald. Why would they want to harm anyone who would only be helping them in that endeavor?
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