On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 40, Accessories After the Fact
- Fred Litwin
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
Updated: 20 hours ago
On this episode, I review Sylvia Meagher's book, Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & the Report on the JFK Assassination.
Here is a link to Meagher's critique of the Warren Report from November 1964. It's not very impressive -- she even has a section on mysterious deaths (page 18).
Here is some text from my upcoming book, a history of conspiratorial thinking in the JFK assassination, on Sylvia Meagher: (hat tip to Bill Brown for some of this)
Helen Markham, Barbara Davis, Virginia Davis, William Scoggins, Sam Guinyard, Ted Callaway, Warren Reynolds, Pat Patterson and Harold Russell all identified Lee Oswald as the man they saw either shoot Tippit or run from the scene immediately afterwards with a gun. Jimmy Burt, Bill Smith, Domingo Benavides and L.J. Lewis saw the cop-killer but couldn't positively identify the guy as being Lee Oswald. However, they did not say the guy was not Oswald, either. And so thirteen people saw the shooting and/or the man flee the scene. Nine out of the thirteen identified Oswald. Four couldn't be sure. None of the thirteen said the cop-killer was not Oswald.
None of this mattered to Meagher. To her, Scoggins was not a credible witness because a bush obstructed his view; Markham could be discounted because she was slightly crazy; and the identifications of the Davis sisters, Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard were useless because Meagher believed the lineups at the police station were tainted. She discounted the other witnesses who saw Oswald running from the scene because they were not contacted until the end of January, 1964, and did not select Oswald’s photograph from a group of pictures.
But Scoggins said he saw Oswald approach Tippit and that he then heard the shots. He momentarily lost sight of Oswald because of some shrubbery but saw Oswald, with his revolver in his hand, run south on Patton. The Davis sisters saw Oswald run across their lawn and unload a couple of cartridges from his revolver – which they later collected and gave to the police.
Meagher says that Warren Reynolds did not identify Oswald but changed his testimony in July 1964, after he had been shot in the head. She does not tell her readers that in January 1964 Reynolds told the FBI that “he is of the opinion Oswald is the person he had followed on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.”
Meagher concluded that “The eyewitness identifications are highly vulnerable and would have been torn to shreds in a courtroom.” But any of these witnesses could have identified Oswald in a courtroom. The quality of the lineups would have been immaterial.
And Meagher was incredibly unfair to Helen Markham.
The testimony of Helen Markham, the other eyewitness to the shooting, has been denounced sufficiently by critics of the Warren Report. I do not wish to further belabor the point that she lacks any semblance of credibility. She said that she was alone with Tippit for 20 minutes before an ambulance arrived, and that Tippit-—who is said to have died instantaneously—tried to talk to her; she was in hysterics and somehow managed to leave her shoes on top of Tippit’s car (CE 1974); sedatives had to be administered before she was taken to view the line-up at about 4:30 p.m. on Friday.
It does indeed sound strange that Markham managed to leave her shoes on top of Tippit’s car, but Meagher doesn’t tell her readers that these were her work shoes [Markham was a waitress] that she was carrying in a bag. Meagher says that “sedatives had to be administered,” but this is not true at all. She was on the verge of fainting at the police station and they gave her some ammonia – which is a stimulant, not a sedative. And Markham heard “gurgling” sounds from Tippit’s body which she misinterpreted as an attempt to speak. Given the shock that Markham was in, it’s not surprising she lost track of time.
Meagher quotes this testimony from Markham:
Mr. Ball: Now when you went into the room you looked these people over, these four men?
Mrs. Markham: Yes, sir.
Mr. Ball: Did you recognize anyone in the line-up?
Mrs. Markham: No, sir.
Mr. Ball: You did not? Did you see anybody—I have asked you that question before—did you recognize anybody from their face?
Mrs. Markham: From their face, no.
Mr. Ball: Did you identify anybody in these four people?
Mrs. Markham: I didn’t know nobody . . . I had never seen none of them, none of these men.
Mr. Ball: No one of the four?
Mrs. Markham: No one of them.
Mr. Ball: No one of all four?
Mrs. Markham: No, sir.
Mr. Ball: Was there a number two man in there?
Mrs. Markham: Number two is the one I picked. . . . Number two was the man I saw shoot the policeman. . . . I looked at him. When I saw this man I wasn’t sure, but I had cold chills just run all over me. . . . (3H 310-311)
Meagher noted that “reading this testimony about the “identification” on which the Commission relied, I feel a few cold chills too."
When Markham is asked if she could identify anybody in the four-person lineup and she replied “I didn’t know nobody,” and then further replied “I didn’t know nobody,” Markham thought he was talking about a time before the shooting. Meagher then implies that Markham wasn’t sure of her identification of Oswald. But Meagher leaves out Markham’s testimony after her remark about “cold chills.”
Mr. Ball: When you saw him?
Mrs. Markham: When I saw the man. But I wasn’t sure, so, you see, I told them I wanted to be sure, and looked at his face is what I was looking at, mostly is what I looked at, on account of his eyes, the way he looked at me. So I asked them if they would turn them sideways. They did, and then they turned him back around, and I said the second, and they said, which one, and I said number two. So when I said that, well, I just kind of fell over. Everybody in there, you know, was beginning to talk, and I didn’t know just –
…
Mr. Ball: Did you recognize the man from his clothing or from his face.
Mrs. Markham: Mostly from his face.
Mr. Ball: Were you sure it was the same man you had seen before?
Mrs. Markham: I am sure.
…
Mrs. Markham: When we looked at each other, he just stared, just like that. I just don’t know. I just seen him – I would know the man anywhere, I know I would.
Here is the book review from the December 19, 1967, issue of the San Francisco Examiner [item 4]:
Here is where Stanley got his Meagher quote: (emphasis added in page 237 in the Kindle edition of Accessories After the Fact)
From his arrest on Friday to his death on Sunday, Oswald declined to conceal his face; he never appeared cowed or ashamed but maintained his personal pride and dignity and seemingly full confidence in his ultimate vindication. He charged on a number of occasions that he was being railroaded, that he was “a patsy,” and that he was the victim of a frame-up. He was pitifully unsuspecting of the fate that he was to meet in the police basement. Some police officers and Dallas officials saw this as arrogance and resented his failure to panic or grovel. Was his behavior characteristic of guilt, or of innocence? There is no objective test which can be applied, and the answer will depend on one’s personal predisposition toward Oswald and one’s private attitudes toward the nightmarish events that transpired in Dallas. What can be said without uncertainty is that the Warren Commission did not at any stage of its work appear to regard seriously the possibility that Oswald was the victim of a frame-up. The Commission has calmly accepted the explanation that no transcript of the interrogation was made. Fritz testified that he had no tape recorder, his past requests to his superiors for one having been denied. He was not asked why he had not borrowed a tape recorder; the FBI and Secret Service agents who were present at the interrogations were not asked why they had not offered one to Fritz. It is not necessary to belabor this issue: the point is that the Commission was uncritical, un-skeptical, and complacent in dealing with the Dallas police—not on this question alone but also on other aspects of the case, including flagrant discrepancies or contradictions in the testimony and the suspect conduct or explanations of certain officials.
Here is the Chicago Tribune review of Meagher and her index from December 31, 1967:
Previous Episodes of On the Trail of Delusion:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Episode 12
Episode 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
Episode 16
Episode 17
Episode 18
An interview with Phil Tinline about his book, Ghosts of Iron Mountain.
Episode 19
Episode 20
Episode 21
Episode 22
Episode 23
Episode 24
Episode 25
Episode 26
Episode 27
Episode 28
Episode 29
Episode 30
Episode 31
Episode 32
Episode 33
Episode 34
Episode 35
Episode 36
Episode 37
Episode 38
Episode 39
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Sylvia Meagher
My review of Kaitlyn Tiffany's new book.
Meagher comments on Garrison's failure to appear on a radio show.
An excerpt from a letter Meagher sent to Thomas Stamm.
Salandria tries to make up with Meagher.
Philippe Labro was a French journalist who covered the JFK assassination for France-Soir.
Fensterwald invites Meagher to join his organization. She refuses because of Jim Garrison.
A scathing review of Flammonde's book about the Garrison investigation.
An exchange of letters about Jim Garrison.
Garrison comes up with a crazy code and Sylvia Meagher calls him out.
Meagher also wrote poetry.
Meagher's very good idea shows that Garrison didn't care to learn the truth.
Thornley tells Meagher about an article illustrating Garrison's pre-occupation with the JFK assassination.
Bethell wrote Meagher about Charles Spiesel and his ridiculous testimony at the Clay Shaw trial.
Sylvia Meagher's terrific letter to Look Magazine in response to their article "The Persecution of Clay Shaw."
She was very pleased with his acquittal.
Meagher writes Clay Shaw a letter and his response is just terrific.
Dr. Wecht didn't think too much of Garrison, either.
Meagher educates Farrell on Jim Garrison.
A plea to Oliver Stone with a compilation of Meagher's writings about Jim Garrison.
Howard Roffman writes a letter to Harold Weisberg about Sylvia Meagher.
This phone call broke their relationship.
An unpublished Meagher memo on the trial of Clay Shaw.
Another unpublished Meagher memo on the Garrison investigation and Warren Report critics.
Sylvia Meagher's letter to the Editor regarding Garrison's interview in Playboy Magazine.
Meagher writes Harold Weisberg with her comments on the verdict.
James Phelan and Sylvia Meagher write Garrison letters about his book.
An exchange of letters between Thornley and Meagher.
Meagher writes Thornley about Lane's comment on RFK.
Meagher writes Thornley with an opinion.
Exchange of letters between Meagher, Arnoni and Garrison.
Meagher writes Weisberg about the damage Garrison is doing to critics of the Warren Report.
Meagher replies to the New York Review of Books regarding Popkin's article on Garrison.
An exchange of letters between Popkin and Meagher.
