Capt William R Westbrook

There seems to be extraordinarily sparse information on DPD Capt William R Westbrook.

He's an important figure in the events around the JFK assassination because he was present when the mystery wallet (allegedly one of Oswald's wallets) was found at the scene of the Tippit shooting by Sgt Kenneth Croy, and he was also at the scene when Oswald's jacket was discovered underneath a car.

Westbrook wasn't a patrol officer. He was in the Personnel Division of the DPD, he had a cushy desk job. Who ordered him to the Tippit scene? (And why was Bob Barrett along?)

One interesting thing about William Ralph Westbrook, is that he appears almost nowhere on Google. It's almost as if he didn't exist. The information in the Sneed book indicates that Westbrook "retired" from the DPD in 1966, and subsequently became an advisor to the Saigon police. It also claims he worked at Schepp's Dairy and as an investigator for Henry Wade (a position from which he also allegedly "retired"). The Sneed book claims he died in 1996. However I can't corroborate any of this with a simple google search.

First, I'd greatly appreciate linkage to any first-hand sources about Westbrook.

Second, I have a question. The DPD retirement records list an Anna F Westbrook as having passed away in 2011. Texas marriage records show a William R Westbrook marrying an Anna F Moore in 1992. Question: is this the same person?

Westbrook, in my opinion, was involved in the framing of Oswald- as it happened- and consequently an accessory after-the-fact to the homicide of President Kennedy.

You mentioned the jacket found at the Tippit scene. And the wallet. Westbrook was the last person known to have possession of the wallet recovered at the Tippit scene before it disappeared.

At the Texas Theater, once Oswald was escorted outside, Westbrook ordered Lt. Elmo Cunningham, Detective John Toney and Detective E.E. Taylor to get the names and addresses of everyone present. There were 24 patrons, according to ticket-seller Julia Postal's ticket count. Johnny Brewer testified, "The police officers and plainclothesmen, whoever they were, got everybody that was in the theater and set them aside, and another officer was taking their names and addresses of all the people that were in the theater."

This information vanished. The Warren Commission asked the FBI to attempt to locate the list and they failed. Had any theater-goers been able to testify to seeing Oswald before the film began, he could not have been placed at the Tippit murder scene.

Westbrook testified, "I don't know who has the list."

When Sgt. Gerald Hill returned from the Theater, he started filling out an arrest report in Westbrook's personnel office. Westbrook shortly came in and informed Hill that Oswald was an admitted communist, had been in the Marines, had a dishonorable discharge, had been to Russia, and had some trouble in New Orleans with the police for passing out pro-Castro literature. None of this information came from Oswald, who was in Fritz's office for his initial interrogation. Where did Westbrook obtain it?

He took early retirement from the DPD in 1966 and went to work as a full-time advisor for South Vietnam's secret police, which was controlled by the CIA. How do you think he got that job? Looking through the want ads in the Saigon Daily, sending a cover letter & resume? I'd venture to speculate he had some serious CIA connections that helped obtain that employment.

According to his testimony, he had just stepped out onto a rear TSBD loading dock when Sgt. Henry Stringer hollered that an officer had just been shot in Oak Cliff. Westbrook ran to the front of the Depository and hopped in his car.

Robert Barrett was standing at the front entrance with his close friend Sheriff Bill Decker when they overheard a police radio broadcasting a description of the Tippit suspect. Decker looked around and didn't see any of his men and suggested Barrett go on over there and find out what was happening. Barrett realized there was nothing else he could do at the TSBD and so got into his FBI car and drove on over to the Tippit murder scene.

Well summarized, Richard. I've been trying to obtain info on Westbrook from outside the usual places. No luck. 

Does anyone know if there was a William, Jr? I did find something on a crooked cop in a different state who had the same name and would be the right age to be a son of...

I'll share that seemingly so many posting anonymously is a concern.

From Newsbank, U.S. Obits:

Dallas Morning News, The (TX) - February 21, 1996
Deceased Name: Rites set for William Ralph Westbrook
Services for William Ralph "Pinky" Westbrook , a retired Dallas Police Department captain, will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Go Ye Village in Tahlequah, Okla. Mr. Westbrook , 78, died Monday of cancer at his home in Tahlequah. He worked for the Dallas Police Department from 1940 to 1965. He also worked as a special investigator for the Dallas County district attorney's office from 1970 to 1983. His wife, Anna Fern Westbrook , said he liked his job but he did not talk about it to his family. She said Mr. Westbrook wanted to do something that would benefit all the people of Dallas. "He would do just about anything for anybody because he was a very generous person," she said. "He also liked working back in the early days because he said it was not as dangerous as it is today." Mr. Westbrook is also survived by his son, Ralph Westbrook Jr. of Dallas; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren

William Ralph Westbrook, Jr. is a participant in the World Series of Poker and recent results indicate he can make a living at it.

[PDF]
Main Event - $1675 No-Limit Hold'em - Poker Tournament Consultants
pokertournamentconsultants.com/choctaw/2014wsopDay2.pdf‎
Whaley. Shenandoah, TX. 163,000. 14. 3. W. Ralph. Westbrook. Dallas, TX. 162,000 ... Billy. Sewell. 140,500. 22. 7. Jesse. Wilke. Kenmore, WA. 138,500. 33. 1.

Mom's 2010 obit.:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/obituary.aspx?n=anna-westbrook&pid=147163200

FWIW.....

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69246178
.....
my baseball coach (captain pinkie westbrook) was the arresting officer of lee harvey oswald, at the theatre, in oak cliff and also carried oswalds gun back to headquarters in dallas.

Tom Scully wrote:I'll share that seemingly so many posting anonymously is a concern.

From Newsbank, U.S. Obits:

Dallas Morning News, The (TX) - February 21, 1996
Deceased Name: Rites set for William Ralph Westbrook
Services for William Ralph "Pinky" Westbrook , a retired Dallas Police Department captain, will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Go Ye Village in Tahlequah, Okla. Mr. Westbrook , 78, died Monday of cancer at his home in Tahlequah. He worked for the Dallas Police Department from 1940 to 1965. He also worked as a special investigator for the Dallas County district attorney's office from 1970 to 1983. His wife, Anna Fern Westbrook , said he liked his job but he did not talk about it to his family. She said Mr. Westbrook wanted to do something that would benefit all the people of Dallas. "He would do just about anything for anybody because he was a very generous person," she said. "He also liked working back in the early days because he said it was not as dangerous as it is today." Mr. Westbrook is also survived by his son, Ralph Westbrook Jr. of Dallas; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren

William Ralph Westbrook, Jr. is a participant in the World Series of Poker and recent results indicate he can make a living at it.

[PDF]
Main Event - $1675 No-Limit Hold'em - Poker Tournament Consultants
pokertournamentconsultants.com/choctaw/2014wsopDay2.pdf‎
Whaley. Shenandoah, TX. 163,000. 14. 3. W. Ralph. Westbrook. Dallas, TX. 162,000 ... Billy. Sewell. 140,500. 22. 7. Jesse. Wilke. Kenmore, WA. 138,500. 33. 1.

Mom's 2010 obit.:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/obituary.aspx?n=anna-westbrook&pid=147163200

FWIW.....

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69246178
.....
my baseball coach (captain pinkie westbrook) was the arresting officer of lee harvey oswald, at the theatre, in oak cliff and also carried oswalds gun back to headquarters in dallas.

Tom,

I'd prefer people didn't post anonymously -- but we're not in the business of checking credentials or IDs. In any case, how can I be sure your real name is "Tom Scully"? I'm not even certain of what mine is half the time...

It's not illegal and an obvious alias is preferable to a non-obvious one. In any case, I'm more concerned with content than the name of the party providing the content. The Ed Forum went down the path of insisting people use real names and real photos. Fat lot of good it did.

So this William Westbrook of Buffalo is not related?

Very interesting! Thanks all. This part is noteworthy:

He also worked as a special investigator for the Dallas County district attorney's office from 1970 to 1983. His wife, Anna Fern Westbrook , said he liked his job but he did not talk about it to his family.

That's a mighty interesting thing to say, considering that WR and Anna were only married in 1992!

And, I have Anna's obit in the DPD retirement monthly newsletter, that was 2011.

So it seems Anna is telling us here, that in their 19 years of blissful marriage he didn't ever talk about his job(s)?

Most men love talking about their jobs, don't they?

Hm.

Anyway, I did notice as I was checking records, that there seemed to have been some usage of the "alias" W. Ralph Westbrook.

Interesting considering the son seems to call himself Ralph Jr.

And, people working in the personnel office would be in the business of.... background checks and things like that, yes?

nonsqtr wrote:That's a mighty interesting thing to say, considering that WR and Anna were only married in 1992!

Whoa there. 

From her obit:
She was preceded in death by her husband of 52 years, William Ralph "Pinkie" Westbrook. She is survived by her son Ralph Westbrook, - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/obituary.aspx?n=anna-westbrook&pid=147163200#sthash.WE6qLN9o.dpuf

greg parker wrote:

nonsqtr wrote:That's a mighty interesting thing to say, considering that WR and Anna were only married in 1992!

Whoa there. 

From her obit:
She was preceded in death by her husband of 52 years, William Ralph "Pinkie" Westbrook. She is survived by her son Ralph Westbrook, - See more at:

Excellent!




That's why I asked the question about Anna F Moore.




'Cause it would seem someone's fibbing here (or, maybe there really is an honest mistake).




I have the Texas marriage records for a William R Westbrook and an Anna F Moore in 1992. It's the only Texas marriage record I can find for a WR Westbrook and any female named Anna.




And I also have a 2011 obit for Anna F Moore in the DPD retirement newsletter.




(I don't have either of them online, I might be able to find them by now though, they say everything's on the internet these days - but maybe I could scan them and put them on someone's web site, so you can take a look at them). (Now doing not-so-quick Google search.... hm... well, here is the Dallas PD one, surprise surprise.... if you scroll down to page 4-ish where it says "remembering those we lost in 2011", there's Anna F Westbrook - and so here she is on the retirement benefits roll of the Dallas Police Department, so I'm thinking this is "pretty good evidence" that it really is her, yes?)




dpfp.org / images / PDFs / Newsletters / 2012_Pensioner/2012_01_Jan_Retiree-8x11.pdf




I'll see if I can find the marriage record, that might take me a minute 'cause there's "too much" on Google instead of "too little", but gimme another minute and I'll sift through this stuff and see if I can find it.




So I guess the question is - are we looking at and talking about the same woman?




Was her maiden name Moore, or is there other information on Westbrook's wife's maiden name?


edit: well, the system won't let me post links for another few days, so... I had to hack up the link. Sorry, you'll have to put it back together.

Here we go - the marriage record in question:

texasmarriagerecords.org/marriage-of-william-westbrook-and-anna-moore.html

Was her maiden name Moore, or is there other information on Westbrook's wife's maiden name?

The $64.00 question. Maybe TS can get to the bottom of it.


edit: well, the system won't let me post links for another few days, so... I had to hack up the link. Sorry, you'll have to put it back together. 

Sorry. Spammer deterrent. Will fix.

Thanks Greg! Well, I'm satisfied I've found the right kind of forum, otherwise there would have been some ridicule by now.

But like, here's the other part of the story ('cause we know in advance that nothing about the JFK assassination is simple, right?) - ha ha:

peoplefinders.com / divorce-records / anna+westbrook

There's the last line, William R and Anna F, divorced 9/14/1990.

So.... (Re)-married in '92?

Gee, that sounds interesting, you'd think something like that would have been all over the Dallas papers, right?

I've heard of old people doing stuff like this for social security reasons (or maybe medicare reasons, stuff like that). For whatever reason related to the way the law is structured at the time, they get better benefits being single, so they get divorced for a while, then when the crisis is over they feel the need to renew their vows.

It is interesting, ain't it? Maybe that's what we have here, something like that?

(I'm kinda new to this JFK research thing, so stop me if I'm askin' about stuff you already know the answers to).

It is apparently the same woman.

"Survived by brother Arthur Moore". Therefore her maiden name was Moore.

Extraordinary, that this information wouldn't be found in a simple google search.

There isn't even a Wiki entry on Capt William R Westbrook.

I'm glad so many people are focusing on Westbrook.

I think he was involved in framing Oswald for the  assassination.  My book State Secret has a lot more on Westbrook at Chapters 6-7, but here's a quick round-up...

That wallet came out of nowhere into Croy's hands, and then Westbrook.  Westbrook wrote no memo about the mysteriously-appearing wallet.

That wallet, with the ID of both Oswald and Hidell, tied LHO not just to the Tippit crime scene (I don't think he was even there), but to the Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor.

Another thing about Westbrook - he worked in his shirt sleeves at Personnel.  He didn't wear a uniform, what was he doing out there giving orders that day?

He was more of a spook than anything else - he had access to all the officers' personnel files, he could make someone or break someone, and had a pretty good  read on them from his access to the files.  I think of him as similar to Angleton's analyst Ann Egerter.

If memory serves me right, Gerald Hill worked in the Personnel office with him.

Bill Simpich wrote:I'm glad so many people are focusing on Westbrook.

I think he was involved in framing Oswald for the  assassination.  My book State Secret has a lot more on Westbrook at Chapters 6-7, but here's a quick round-up...

That wallet came out of nowhere into Croy's hands, and then Westbrook.  Westbrook wrote no memo about the mysteriously-appearing wallet.

That wallet, with the ID of both Oswald and Hidell, tied LHO not just to the Tippit crime scene (I don't think he was even there), but to the Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor.

Another thing about Westbrook - he worked in his shirt sleeves at Personnel.  He didn't wear a uniform, what was he doing out there giving orders that day?

He was more of a spook than anything else - he had access to all the officers' personnel files, he could make someone or break someone, and had a pretty good  read on them from his access to the files.  I think of him as similar to Angleton's analyst Ann Egerter.

If memory serves me right, Gerald Hill worked in the Personnel office with him.

Thanks Bill. That distills it nicely.

I've been thinking about that nick-name "Pinky"... 

Didn't Rose Cheramie claim that was Ruby's nick-name? Not to say that Ruby and Westbrook couldn't coincidentally share the same nick-name...

Westbrook was a burly man with broad shoulders whose ruddy complexion earned him the nickname "Pinky" from his fellow officers. He was an Arkansas native who moved to Dallas in 1937 and joined the DPD in 1941.

Richard Gilbride wrote:Westbrook was a burly man with broad shoulders whose ruddy complexion earned him the nickname "Pinky" from his fellow officers. He was an Arkansas native who moved to Dallas in 1937 and joined the DPD in 1941.

Thanks Richard!

"subsequently became an advisor to the Saigon police"

I thought this merited further checking out.


It seems this service was provided through USAID. 


Which translates as CIA. 


 one of many sources:
Foreign assistance authorization: hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-third Congress, second session...



.. the U.S. Agency for International Development was requesting 815.2 million for continued funding of the GVN's police and prison ... Under the Paris Agreement, the Administration was required to withdraw all advisors to Saigon's police force. ... (Vietnamese police) officers said they and their staffs met frequently with the Saigon station chief of the CIA and his staff . . . Police officials confirmed that in some provinces American 'liaison' men who work with the police remain on the job .

Bill Simpich wrote:I'm glad so many people are focusing on Westbrook.

I think he was involved in framing Oswald for the  assassination.  My book State Secret has a lot more on Westbrook at Chapters 6-7, but here's a quick round-up...

That wallet came out of nowhere into Croy's hands, and then Westbrook.  Westbrook wrote no memo about the mysteriously-appearing wallet.

That wallet, with the ID of both Oswald and Hidell, tied LHO not just to the Tippit crime scene (I don't think he was even there), but to the Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor.

Another thing about Westbrook - he worked in his shirt sleeves at Personnel.  He didn't wear a uniform, what was he doing out there giving orders that day?

He was more of a spook than anything else - he had access to all the officers' personnel files, he could make someone or break someone, and had a pretty good  read on them from his access to the files.  I think of him as similar to Angleton's analyst Ann Egerter.

If memory serves me right, Gerald Hill worked in the Personnel office with him.

I agree that Westbrook is a suspicious character.

Chauncey Holt tells a very interesting (and very detailed) story about the identification he was asked to generate, prior to the JFK assassination.

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/chauncey-holts-execution-of-oswald.html

As you know Bill, I've begun work with a computer system that's going to help fill in some of the missing links with this stuff. The real question (I think) is the path of the ID, between Holt and Westbrook (or, I'm using this as an example - let's say, between "the forgers" and wherever the ID was used).

The key corroborative evidence that leaps out at me, is that Holt claims he generated multiple sets of ID's, and we have in fact discovered multiple sets of ID's. The real question is how these ID's got from Holt's hands into Westbrook's hands - and when we research that piece, we're in a different world, we're in the world of people like Phillip A Twombly and so on. Speaking of which - what do we really know about Twombly, anything?

greg parker wrote:

"subsequently became an advisor to the Saigon police"

I thought this merited further checking out.


It seems this service was provided through USAID. 


Which translates as CIA. 


 one of many sources:
Foreign assistance authorization: hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-third Congress, second session...



.. the U.S. Agency for International Development was requesting 815.2 million for continued funding of the GVN's police and prison ... Under the Paris Agreement, the Administration was required to withdraw all advisors to Saigon's police force. ... (Vietnamese police) officers said they and their staffs met frequently with the Saigon station chief of the CIA and his staff . . . Police officials confirmed that in some provinces American 'liaison' men who work with the police remain on the job .

Greg, are you aware of any source documents on the Saigon assignment? I haven't been able to find any.

However, it is true that David Sanchez Morales and David Atlee Phillips and a lot of other JFK personalities ended up in Vietnam (or Laos or Cambodia or close by). Sam Kail is another interesting character along those lines, he's the "ear guy", the guy who was rumored to collect Vietnamese childrens' ears.

The thing is - the CIA had a whole ton of what you'd call "contractors" - people who were officially off the record and had no accountability. This is why the CIA can say things like "we never had any association with David Ferrie" - because he wasn't an actual employee, he was just a contractor. And it occurs to me that all the US-AID personnel were the same way - not official employees, but just contractors.

We'd like to know the actual chain of operational command, and that's one of the things the CIA doesn't seem to want to reveal to us.

Tom Scully wrote:I'll share that seemingly so many posting anonymously is a concern.

From Newsbank, U.S. Obits:

Dallas Morning News, The (TX) - February 21, 1996
Deceased Name: Rites set for William Ralph Westbrook
Services for William Ralph "Pinky" Westbrook , a retired Dallas Police Department captain, will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Go Ye Village in Tahlequah, Okla. Mr. Westbrook , 78, died Monday of cancer at his home in Tahlequah. He worked for the Dallas Police Department from 1940 to 1965. He also worked as a special investigator for the Dallas County district attorney's office from 1970 to 1983. His wife, Anna Fern Westbrook , said he liked his job but he did not talk about it to his family. She said Mr. Westbrook wanted to do something that would benefit all the people of Dallas. "He would do just about anything for anybody because he was a very generous person," she said. "He also liked working back in the early days because he said it was not as dangerous as it is today." Mr. Westbrook is also survived by his son, Ralph Westbrook Jr. of Dallas; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren

William Ralph Westbrook, Jr. is a participant in the World Series of Poker and recent results indicate he can make a living at it.

[PDF]
Main Event - $1675 No-Limit Hold'em - Poker Tournament Consultants
pokertournamentconsultants.com/choctaw/2014wsopDay2.pdf‎
Whaley. Shenandoah, TX. 163,000. 14. 3. W. Ralph. Westbrook. Dallas, TX. 162,000 ... Billy. Sewell. 140,500. 22. 7. Jesse. Wilke. Kenmore, WA. 138,500. 33. 1.

Mom's 2010 obit.:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/obituary.aspx?n=anna-westbrook&pid=147163200

FWIW.....

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69246178
.....
my baseball coach (captain pinkie westbrook) was the arresting officer of lee harvey oswald, at the theatre, in oak cliff and also carried oswalds gun back to headquarters in dallas.

Tom, thank you! I'm adding the Investors Hub link to my database. Baseball coach is a great lead, you never know what might be on the other side of that one.

You should follow up with bill Kelly on twombly he is the expert on him.

I think one big question is whether hill and Westbrook were part of the anting of evidence or not. I have read Hassan's articles n hill which are quite good . I can't publish this but I gave a source who says that hill grew to not trust Westbrook after 11/22. That could be true or disinformation. I do know that we would learn more from westbrooks contemporaries. Do we know any dallas researchers working on Westbrook?

Bill Simpich wrote:You should follow up with bill Kelly on twombly he is the expert on him.  

I think one big question is whether hill and Westbrook were part of the anting of evidence or not.  I have read Hassan's articles n hill which are quite good .  I can't publish this but I gave a source who says that hill grew to not trust Westbrook after 11/22.  That could be true or disinformation.  I do know that we would learn more from westbrooks contemporaries.  Do we know any dallas researchers working on Westbrook?

ROFL! I just read a whole long thing by Bill where he consistently calls Twombly "George".

Ha ha - and I say that with hoof firmly planted in mouth, since I myself have made many much worse mistakes. Seriously, I have the utmost respect for Bill and his writings. I do wish he could post more source links sometimes.

I have to tell you though, this computer system is great! I found a really good one yesterday - there's a whole long section of the Mary Ferrell chronology where Joyce McDonald (no "a") is confused with Betty MacDonald (with an "a"). The computer picked that up in a micro-second, it spit out an Irreconcilable Evidence warning on the very first validation. Ferrell has "Betty MacDonald" as the person who worked at the State Fair and who received the check from Lawrence Meyers. And regarding Betty I also found an oddball assertion of a marriage to a "Dr Miller", which can't possibly be correct because Betty died in jail a year earlier. And on this latter one, it doesn't look like a typo because Joyce hasn't married a "Dr Miller" either (that I'm aware of - I seem to recall there was a "Singer" somewhere in the picture, so I'll have to follow up and nail down that information).

People do get tired, yes? After five or six hours of looking at the sea of names, I get tired too.

Regarding Twombly, we need to know the chain of command, and I don't know if that's something Bill can tell us. The type of thing that Chauncey Holt was involved in would be classified as "Operational Support", and at least on paper (and likely in the actual reporting chain) it wouldn't have had anything to do with JM/, it would gone through a whole different division of the CIA. I've long suspected that Richard Helms is one of the people we should be looking at, and at a high level this would fallen into his basket. The Joannides money came from Helms' budget, right? And support requests would have had to have been approved by someone with the money to pay for them. John McCone told DCI Stansfield Turner that the CIA actions in Chile were the work of Richard Helms, who didn't tell McCone what he was doing. Helms was just "that kind of a guy" - he didn't tell anyone what he was doing. Not even his boss. Hm.

Bill Simpich wrote:You should follow up with bill Kelly on twombly he is the expert on him.  

I think one big question is whether hill and Westbrook were part of the anting of evidence or not.  I have read Hassan's articles n hill which are quite good .  I can't publish this but I gave a source who says that hill grew to not trust Westbrook after 11/22.  That could be true or disinformation.  I do know that we would learn more from westbrooks contemporaries.  Do we know any dallas researchers working on Westbrook?

Thank you for your compliment about my articles on Hill, Mr. Simpich. I firmly believe Hill framed Oswald inside the Theater by pretending to remove the revolver (WCE 143) from Oswald's person. Everything Hill had to say should be taken with a truck load of salt.

Hey, Brian/nonsqtr. It's been eight months since I asked you about Westbrook and the 488th MID at the Webs ROKC forum. Instead of answering the question, you've run away. What are you afraid of, Mr. n00b?