J.D. Tippit was the Dallas Police officer allegedly killed by Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination. Although evidence fully indicates that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Officer Tippit, it remains only an allegation since Oswald was never brought to trial.

J. D. Tippit was born on 18 September 1918 in Clarksville, TX. He was the first of six children born to Edgar Lee Tippit, a sharecropper cotton farmer and his wife, Lizzie Mae Rush Tippit. The initials J. D. were given to him by his father as a first name; they do not represent names. His father named him after a character in a novel that he read while in high school. Tippit attended Fulbright High School but dropped out after the tenth grade to help on the family farm. Growing up on a rural Texas farm, he enjoyed hunting, fishing and horseback riding.

Upon the outbreak of World War II, his father went to work in a war plant in Hooks, TX, leaving 15-year old J.D. to operate the family farm. In 1944, the family moved to Birmingham, TX, to be near the factory where his father worked. J.D. enlisted in the U.S. Army on 21 July 1944, and after completing basic training at Camp Wolters, TX, he volunteered for the paratroops.

After completing airborne training at Fort Benning, GA, in late 1944, J.D. was shipped to England and assigned to the 17th Airborne Division as an Infantryman. In January 1945, he was assigned to the 513th Battalion (Parachute Infantry), 17th Airborne Division, and was sent into combat in France. On 24 March 1945, as a participant in Operation Varsity, he parachuted with the 17th Division across the Rhine River near Eiersfordt, Germany, making his one and only combat jump, and earning the Bronze Star Medal. Tippit remained on active duty until 20 June 1946, when he was honorably discharged. At that time, he returned to his family farm in Red River County, TX.

On 26 December 1946, J.D. married his high school sweetheart, Marie Frances Gasway, in Clarksville, TX, and they later had three children: Allan, Brenda, and Curtis. J.D. found work in Dallas, TX, working for the Dearborn Stove Company and Sears Roebuck, but in September 1949 he moved to Lone Star, TX, where he tried his hand at raising cattle. In 1952, he returned to Dallas where he was hired as a Patrolman by the Dallas Police Department on 28 July. Assigned badge number 848, J.D. took to police work naturally and soon developed a talent for spotting troublemakers. Fellow police officers would remark about his instinctive ability to spot suspicious people about to make trouble. In 1956, J.D. was cited for bravery for using this ability to kill a gunman in a bar before the man could kill the police officers.

On 22 November 1963, Officer J.D. Tippit was working his normal beat in the south Oak Cliff section of Dallas, when President John F. Kennedy was shot. Within minutes, a description of Oswald went out to all police officers as the possible assassin. Spotting Oswald walking down the sidewalk, Tippit pulled over to talk with him, since he closely resembled the man the police dispatcher had identified as a suspect. When Tippit got out of his patrol car, Oswald suddenly pulled out a pistol and shot Tippit four times, killing him instantly. Two people witnessed the shooting and later identified Oswald as Tippit's killer; seven others saw Oswald running from the scene, carrying a pistol. Oswald was arrested in a nearby movie theater when the ticket-seller called police about a suspicious looking man. When arrested, Oswald still had the .38 cal. Pistol on him that he used to kill Tippit, and later ballistics tests identified that pistol as the gun that killed Tippit.

Military Medals & Awards

Bronze Star Medal
World War II Victory Medal

Civilian Honors

In January 1964, J.D. Tippit was posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor from the American Police Hall of Fame, and he also received the Police Medal of Honor, the Police Cross, and the Citizens Traffic Commission Award of Heroism.

A memorial to Officer Tippit was unveiled November 20, 2012 at the corner where the shooting occurred (10th and Patton Streets, Dallas, TX).

Death and Burial

Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit was buried at Laurel Land Memorial Park in Dallas on Monday, 25 November 1963, the same day that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald were buried. Over 1,500 mourners attended Tippit's funeral.