How the DPD Found out about 1026 N Beckley
Fay Puckett was the grown daughter of Mr. and Mrs. AC Johnson, owners of the boarding house at 1026 N Beckley, Oak Cliff. According to Fay’s daughter, Pat Hall (who currently owns the premises and runs it as a museum). Fay owned and operated a photographic studio opposite the Texas Theatre and was one of many shop-keepers who witnessed Oswald being led to the police car under arrest.
Pat also claims that Fay recognized the person as one of her parents boarders and phoned them to let them know. Note that the story claims that her mother thought the arrest was over the Tippit murder – but that was only the claim made by the police much later. At the time, police were saying that the crowd were screaming about the assassination – not Tippit and even one of the civilian witnesses claims to have heard a cop yell at Oswald, “Shoot the president will you!” At the time of the assassination, the Johnsons were at a cafe that they also owned and operated. Neither stated in testimony that they received such a call from their daughter. Pat Hall, who was not yet a teenager at the time, may have forgotten that the call from her mother was to a family friend, not direct to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, her grandparents.
The Johnsons state the call came from a friend who was a police officer for a railroad company. They said that this friend rang to tell them of the assassination.1 This news caused them to rush home. Why? The assassination itself was unlikely to be the reason. But what if Fay had phoned this family friend for advice – on the basis that she believed the person under arrest for the assassination lived with her parents? I think it is reasonable that if this friend (named as Nicholson) in turn phoned the Johnsons about their boarder2 being a Kennedy suspect, they would indeed skedaddle home.
This scenario would also explain how the DPD got the address so quickly, since it was most definitely not obtained from Oswald himself.
Mr. BELIN. Where were you when you heard that the President had died?
Mr. JOHNSON. 1029 Young Street.
Mr. BELIN. And is that a business? Mr. JOHNSON. We have a little restaurant there.
Mr. BELIN. You and your wife have a restaurant there?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. Was your wife there, too?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; we work together.
Mr. BELIN. And did you hear this on the radio?
Mr. JOHNSON. No. Uh–we have a friend that is a policeman, works for Cotton Belt Railroad. And he called us–called up here and told us. Of course, we had heard all the sirens and everything, you know, going, and we couldn’t imagine what it was. And Nicholson called us and told us that he had heard it over the radio.
Mr. BELIN. He had heard over the radio that the President had been shot?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. And then, did you turn on your radio?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. We don’t have one there in the place, so we went out in the car and sat there in the car and listened.
Mr. BELIN. All right. And was it while you were sitting in the car that you heard that the President had died?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; we didn’t leave until we–it was announced that he was dead.
Mr. BELIN. How soon after that announcement did you leave?
Mr. JOHNSON. I’d say 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. All right. Then, how long did it take you to get to 1026 North Beckley? Mr. JOHNSON. It takes us about 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. So that about 10 minutes after you heard on the radio that the President had been shot, you arrived with your wife at 1026 North Beckley?
Mr. JOHNSON. That’s right.
Ed Ledoux has identified the railroad cop named as Nicholson by AC Johnson, as most likely being Dallas Police Reservist Lt. Mike Nicholson. Reserve officers usually had other employment, and working as a railroad cop seems logical.3
In the event that Mike Nicholson was the cop who phoned the Johnsons, he may not have even needed to phone the Dallas Police – at least not if he was on duty with them that day. He could have just found Fritz and passed on the information about the address himself. Or else he was not on duty and did phone the DPD, with whoever took the call, passing the information to Fritz.
Either way fits with Fritz’s own explanation as to where the address came from.
Mr. FRITZ. When I started to talk to this prisoner or maybe just before I started to talk to him, some officer told me outside of my office that he had a room on Beckley, I don’t know who that officer was, I think we can find out, I have since I have talked to you this morning I have talked to Lieutenant Baker and he says I know maybe who that officer was, but I am not sure yet.
Mr. BALL. Some officer told you that he thought this man had a room on Beckley?
Mr. FRITZ. Yes, sir.
All other explanations are quite imaginative, but fail the evidentiary test. What is laid out here however, explains how the police could have got to the boarding house prior to the Paine house in Irving – without resort to imaginary files held by Army Intelligence, or other James Bond boondoggles.
The claim that Nicholson had heard the news about the assassination on the radio is doubtful. Why would he hear it on the radio and call the Johnsons in particular? In particular, he would if he heard the news from their daughter, and her information included that a guest of theirs was under arrest for it. Then upon hearing the news from Nicholson, the Johnsons confirm it all from radio reports and make a beeline home to await the arrival of the Dallas police.
It is my belief that Fay Puckett was mistaking Oswald for another boarder named Herbert Leon Lee, a young thin white male of around Oswald’s age, who had arrived from Louisiana around the same time as Oswald – and that Oswald himself, had never lived at that address. What seems to have started as innocent mistaken identity, was adopted as official dogma by police and FBI because it suited their false narrative, allowing them to claim he picked up a pistol from his room prior to killing Officer Tippit. It also suited the Johnson family, who were suddenly the owners of a historical landmark that now could be monetized in ways that it previously could not. What did it matter to them? The only person that could be harmed was already dead. Mrs. Johnson even pre-empted her excuse during testimony. Dallas police took bedding from the room but never returned it, and business was down as a result of the publicity. She had even received permission to sell a piece of alleged evidence and complained that she had only received $30 compensation for all trouble she had been put through.
For those outside the US, it is not uncommon for private corporations running essential services such railroads and ports, to have the own private police forces.?? Thus if Nicholson was employed as a railroad cop, it was not part of his work with the Dallas Police Reserves.
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