[4] About 45 minutes after the assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Tippit was shot and killed in a residential neighborhood in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald.

[12] In the fall of 1939, when he was 15 years old, his family moved to Baker Lane, a stretch of dirt road six miles southwest from Clarksville, Texas.

After finishing his training, he was sent to Europe, in January 1945, and was assigned to the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment (513th PIR), part of the 17th Airborne Division, which had recently fought in the Battle of the Bulge and suffered heavy casualties.

[15] He saw combat in Operation Varsity, the airborne crossing of the Rhine River in March 1945, earning a Bronze Star,[16][17] and remained on active duty until June 20, 1946.

[24] At 12:45 p.m., 15 minutes after President Kennedy was shot, Tippit received a radio order to drive to the central Oak Cliff area as part of a concentration of police around the center of the city.

By then, several messages had been broadcast describing a suspect in the President's shooting at Dealey Plaza[25] as a slender white male, in his early 30s, 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) tall, and weighing about 165 lb (75 kg).

[11] A short time later, Hardy's shoe store manager Johnny Brewer observed Oswald acting suspiciously as police cars passed nearby with sirens blaring.

After that, Ted Callaway, who was Benavides' boss at the used car lot and a former Marine, used the radio and reported the shooting, hearing in response that the police already knew about it.

[38] Taxicab driver William Scoggins testified that he was sitting nearby in his cab when he saw Tippit's police car pull up alongside a man on the sidewalk.

[42] It was the unanimous testimony of expert witnesses before the Warren Commission that these spent cartridge cases were fired from the revolver in Oswald's possession to the exclusion of all other weapons.

Later, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with Cunningham's conclusion that none of the bullets found could be positively identified, or ruled out, as having been fired from Oswald's revolver.

Based on eyewitness' statements and the gun found in Oswald's possession at the time of his arrest, he was formally charged with the murder of Tippit at 7:10 p.m. on November 22.

[50] President Johnson also hoped to quell rumors that arose after Oswald was shot by Ruby that the assassination and subsequent shootings were part of a conspiracy.

[50] On September 24, 1964, the Warren Commission released an 888-page report that concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy and Oswald had acted alone in killing Kennedy and Tippit.

[58] Some conspiracy theorists dispute that Oswald shot Tippit, alleging that the physical evidence and witness testimony do not support that conclusion.

[55][59] New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, who investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy and brought evidence in his 1969 trial of businessman Clay Shaw, contended in his book On the Trail of the Assassins that the witness testimony and handling of evidence in the Tippit murder was flawed and that it was doubtful that Oswald was the killer or even at the scene of the crime.

[60] Garrison claimed that Helen Markham, the Warren Commission's star witness, expressed uncertainty as to her identification of Oswald in the police lineup.

Garrison accused the Dallas Police Department of mishandling the evidence and of possibly firing Oswald's revolver to produce bullet cartridges for the FBI to link to his gun.

[61] Other conspiracy theorists allege that Tippit himself was a conspirator, tasked to kill Oswald by organized crime or right-wing politicians in order to cover up the search for other assassins.

[59][62] On the evening of the assassination, both Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, called Tippit's widow to express their sympathies.

[65] One of the largest individual gifts was $25,000 that Dallas businessman Abraham Zapruder donated to Marie Tippit after selling his film of the president's assassination to Life magazine.

[66] A televised funeral service for Tippit was held on November 25, 1963, at the Beckley Hills Baptist Church, attended by about 2,000 people, at least 800 of them police colleagues.