Oswald Leaving TSBD?

[Robert Prudhomme]

Let's also note that James Jarman told the HSCA that Billy Lovelady told him that Oswald was stopped by an officer at the front entrance and vouched for by Mr. Truly.

What we got here is colloquially known as

HEARSAY, ergo inadmissible.

Yes, it is hearsay but, can you think of a reason Jarman would fabricate this information? Also, did the HSCA attempt to corroborate this testimony of Jarman's by questioning Billy Lovelady?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

However, if Oswald is Prayer Man and if those earlier reports of a first-floor incident give the real, suppressed story, then it really is game over altogether.

Sean: I am not following you.

I believe in Dallas the ground floor was called the first floor.

Yes, first floor = ground floor.

As we all know, Sean, a busted clock is right twice a day

and even the Warren Commission got a few facts straight.

I would like to hear convincing evidence from the doubters of the Warren Commission's version

of the Oswald/Baker/Truly encounter in the first floor lunchroom

where the coke machine was located.

[Sean Murphy]

However, if Oswald is Prayer Man and if those earlier reports of a first-floor incident give the real, suppressed story, then it really is game over altogether.

Sean: I am not following you.

I believe in Dallas the ground floor was called the first floor.

Yes, first floor = ground floor.

As we all know, Sean, a busted clock is right twice a day

and even the Warren Commission got a few facts straight.

I would like to hear convincing evidence from the doubters of the Warren Commission's version

of the Oswald/Baker/Truly encounter in the first floor lunchroom

where the coke machine was located.

Ray, the lunchroom where the coke machine was located was not on the first floor. It was on the second floor.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

However, if Oswald is Prayer Man and if those earlier reports of a first-floor incident give the real, suppressed story, then it really is game over altogether.

Sean: I am not following you.

I believe in Dallas the ground floor was called the first floor.

Yes, first floor = ground floor.

As we all know, Sean, a busted clock is right twice a day

and even the Warren Commission got a few facts straight.

I would like to hear convincing evidence from the doubters of the Warren Commission's version

of the Oswald/Baker/Truly encounter in the first floor lunchroom

where the coke machine was located.

Ray, the lunchroom where the coke machine was located was not on the first floor. It was on the second floor.

You say tomato, and I say tomayto. I hear you Sean.

But can you disprove the Oswald/Baker/Truly encounter, on the floor where the coke machine was located,

whether we call it the first or the second floor, as described in the Warren Report?

[Sean Murphy]

You say tomato, and I say tomayto. I hear you Sean.

But can you disprove the Oswald/Baker/Truly encounter, on the floor where the coke machine was located,

whether we call it the first or the second floor, as described in the Warren Report?

How could I possibly disprove it, Ray, any more than you can prove it? There was no CCTV in the TSBD on 11/22/63.

Like Greg Parker and others, however, I do remain highly sceptical that it ever took place.

[Sean Murphy]

We have reasonably established Prayer Man as a TSBD man, his clothing indicating a manual labor type employee as opposed to a managerial type that would be wearing suit and tie. The available candidates that meet these criteria are limited. They include order fillers, janitor, clerks, and warehousemen. Below is a list of TSBD employees who meet that description. I have added observations regarding their locations when the motorcade passed the TSBD, as claimed in testimony or revealed in film and photo evidence, along with some comments regarding their possibility of being Prayer Man.

Danny Arce – Floor laying crew at the TSBD - Watched Presidential Limo from North side of Elm Street in front of TSBD, (to the West of the Entrance). Wrong location; not a candidate.

Jack Dougherty - 5th floor of TSBD 10' from elevator; he is described by Roy Truly as being a “great big husky fellow”, Description and location disqualify him from consideration as Prayer Man.

Buell Wesley Frazier - Top of front steps at the Center Rail. His precise description of his location, along with his tall thin physique rule him out. See earlier discussion about Frazier (and photos) in this thread.

Charles Givens - Mullendorf's Cafe or Parking lot at Record Street. Being at least one block away means it could not have been Givens.

James Jarman - 5th floor window below sniper's lair. Photo evidence shows he was on the 5^th floor.

Carl Edward Jones - sitting on the front steps / out by Elm Street with Truly, Campbell and Reid. Saw the President slump after being shot. He cannot be Prayer Man.

Roy Edward Lewis - standing with some ladies in the middle of the front steps. Roy Edwards is almost certainly the African American watching from behind the West Column in Altgen’s. He is not Prayer Man.

Billy Lovelady - front steps. Gone from the Steps well before the Darnell shot was taken. Corroborated testimony and film show he is not Prayer Man.

Harold Norman - 5th floor window below sniper's lair. Photo evidence shows he was on the 5^th floor.

Eddie Piper – sitting on a box watching through the second window from the corner on the 1st floor. Location and other factors rule him out.

Troy Eugene West - making coffee on the 1st floor. Did not know JFK had been shot until people rushed into building talking about it. He is not Prayer Man.

Bonnie Ray Wiliams - 5th floor window below sniper's lair. Photo evidence shows he was on the 5^th floor.

Who's left?

Excellent work, Richard, it's good to get these listed systematically like this.

Just a couple of small additions to copperfasten your points:

-Billy Lovelady is even more definitively ruled out as Prayer Man for the simple reason that the two show up right beside each other in the Wiegman footage:

-Buell Wesley Frazier testified that he saw the President as he went past the building but that his view of the limo was blocked by spectators lining Elm Street as the limo proceeded in the direction of the underpass. Whereas Prayer Man's view would have been blocked not by human bodies but by bricks and mortar (of the TSBD entrance's west wall).

So far no-one has suggested that Prayer Man is anyone other than a TSBD employee.

We've had a parade of candidates offered up for consideration (Lovelady, Shelley, Frazier, Williams, Molina, Lewis, Jones) but all have been eliminated with ease.

Now unless someone is going to come forward and tell us that Prayer Man is actually a rather butch woman, we're still stuck with the mother of all questions:

Is Prayer Man none other than Lee Oswald, coke bottle in hand?

Could it really be that simple? You bet your life it could.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Pat Speer]

Quote:

"Holmes was not a murder investigator, and he didn't take notes in his interview with Oswald. He was there to ask about the rifle, and NOT get Oswald to retell his story from start to finish. He may very well have got the bit about Oswald being stopped at the door from the paper quoting Hicks, and Hicks may very well have got it from someone misunderstanding what had happened between Oswald and Baker. The DPD's failure to shut down the building for minutes after the shooting was a major embarrassment, and it may have sounded better, or made more sense, to some to assume Oswald walked out the front after talking to a cop, than the truth--that the front was wide open, and that anyone--including shooters other than Oswald--could have walked out the front."

I fail to see the point of your argument, and how it could possibly make Holmes' testimony to the WC untrustworthy.

I don't believe Holmes a xxxx, if that's what you're getting at. I just think he's highly unreliable as to Oswald's exact words about what he did after the shooting. He wasn't there to compare and contrast Oswald's statements about his movements and to try to catch him in a lie; that was Fritz's job. He was there to discuss the rifle; that's it.

As an exercise, I suggest everyone here go back and read a post you made a week or so ago. Now try to remember the EXACT words of the post you were responding to. You can't do it. And neither could Holmes. Where there were gaps, he fudged things. When people fudge things, they often reach for what feels familiar. Something they've read in the paper--or heard from a friendly cop--is likely to feel familiar.

By way of example, there are a number of witnesses claiming they saw Kennedy's foot fly up over the side of the limo during the shooting. This was something they read in the paper. It never happened.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on this, Pat. I have gone over Holmes' WC testimony several times and I have to say I am quite impressed with Holmes' recall. He is able to present minute details to the Commission months after the assassination.

If he made mistakes in his testimony, would you be so good as to point them out to us? Or perhaps you could show us where you believe he "fudged" things in his testimony?

The fudging is in his report written on Oswald's interrogation. Holmes said Oswald admitted being on the upper floors during the shooting. No one else heard Oswald say such a thing. LNs like Bugliosi have jumped on this in recent years, and have held Holmes up as proof of Oswald's guilt. Never mind that no one else heard Oswald say what Holmes said he said. Never mind that the Warren Commission and its attorneys failed to take Holmes' claim seriously.

You can't prop up the incredible recall of Harry Holmes without also propping up that Oswald admitted to being on the upper floors at the time of the shooting.

[Sean Murphy]

The fudging is in his report written on Oswald's interrogation. Holmes said Oswald admitted being on the upper floors during the shooting. No one else heard Oswald say such a thing. LNs like Bugliosi have jumped on this in recent years, and have held Holmes up as proof of Oswald's guilt. Never mind that no one else heard Oswald say what Holmes said he said. Never mind that the Warren Commission and its attorneys failed to take Holmes' claim seriously.

You can't prop up the incredible recall of Harry Holmes without also propping up that Oswald admitted to being on the upper floors at the time of the shooting.

Pat, this is precisely how Bugliosi, McAdams and co. dispose of inconvenient testimony: they find a chink of unreliability or implausibility in something a witness says and then go from this demonstration of less-than-100% reliability to declaring the witness utterly unreliable.

I would have hoped for a bit more nuance and discrimination from you.

By the way, is it still your contention that Prayer Man is Billy Lovelady? If not, can you suggest any other possible candidates?

[Pat Speer]

The fudging is in his report written on Oswald's interrogation. Holmes said Oswald admitted being on the upper floors during the shooting. No one else heard Oswald say such a thing. LNs like Bugliosi have jumped on this in recent years, and have held Holmes up as proof of Oswald's guilt. Never mind that no one else heard Oswald say what Holmes said he said. Never mind that the Warren Commission and its attorneys failed to take Holmes' claim seriously.

You can't prop up the incredible recall of Harry Holmes without also propping up that Oswald admitted to being on the upper floors at the time of the shooting.

Pat, this is precisely how Bugliosi, McAdams and co. dispose of inconvenient testimony: they find a chink of unreliability or implausibility in something a witness says and then go from this demonstration of less-than-100% reliability to declaring the witness utterly unreliable.

I would have hoped for a bit more nuance and discrimination from you.

By the way, is it still your contention that Prayer Man is Billy Lovelady? If not, can you suggest any other possible candidates?

You're being a bit defensive here, Sean. I never contended it was Lovelady. I said I suspected it was. It seems a bit of a stretch, however, to assume someone would be standing in Prayer Man's position, in a near identical pose as Prayer Man, in a shot with Lovelady in it, a few moments before.

Can we nail down the exact timing of the two shots--the one with Lovelady in it, and the one without? Is it a matter of seconds? How many?

As far as Holmes, you're missing the point, IMO. Of course, we should look at the overall credibility of Holmes' statements before embracing any one of his statements. That's what we do with Brennan, Kellerman, Bledsoe, etc. The strangeness of one part of their statement impacts the reliability of the rest. It doesn't mean they were wrong, of course. But it means we can't run around saying the great Harry Holmes said this so it's gotta be true, without looking foolish.

Let's look at Kellerman. Did he hear Kennedy say "Get me to a hospital!" Of course not. But did he hear the last two shots "bang bang?" I suspect so. Why? Because there's plenty of corroborating evidence. I use the same approach with Holmes. He described the shooting in a manner suggesting the second shot was the head shot, and not the third. This is, surprisingly, supported by a number of other witnesses. And so I believe him.

But do I trust his two-week old recollections of a conversation he had with Oswald, when it differs from the recollections of others present, and fails to highlight the incredibly damaging elements to Oswald? No freaking way. He was just spewing.

As far as the Oswald being stopped at the front door story, it seems highly probable to me that word slipped out of Oswald's encounter with Baker ("Hey, did you hear that Oswald was stopped by a cop, but the cop let him go?") and that this quickly morphed into "Hey, this cop stopped Oswald as he left the front of the building, but let him go." I've done a tremendous amount of reading on human memory, and know this to be a fairly normal chain of events. A story gets added to based upon people's presumptions--in this case, that the building was quickly sealed off--and this becomes the new story. if you read the early reports of the shooting, you'll see that many of them mentioned a Secret Service agent's being killed at the movie theater, or some such thing. People were taking a bit of what they heard, and adding in their assumptions, and creating an inaccurate history. It happens all the time.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Pat Speer

[Sean Murphy]

Pat, I believe something close to 20 seconds separates the Wiegman frame of Prayer Man from the Darnell frame of him.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

We have reasonably established Prayer Man as a TSBD man, his clothing indicating a manual labor type employee as opposed to a managerial type that would be wearing suit and tie. The available candidates that meet these criteria are limited. They include order fillers, janitor, clerks, and warehousemen. Below is a list of TSBD employees who meet that description. I have added observations regarding their locations when the motorcade passed the TSBD, as claimed in testimony or revealed in film and photo evidence, along with some comments regarding their possibility of being Prayer Man.

Danny Arce – Floor laying crew at the TSBD - Watched Presidential Limo from North side of Elm Street in front of TSBD, (to the West of the Entrance). Wrong location; not a candidate.

Jack Dougherty - 5th floor of TSBD 10' from elevator; he is described by Roy Truly as being a “great big husky fellow”, Description and location disqualify him from consideration as Prayer Man.

Buell Wesley Frazier - Top of front steps at the Center Rail. His precise description of his location, along with his tall thin physique rule him out. See earlier discussion about Frazier (and photos) in this thread.

Charles Givens - Mullendorf's Cafe or Parking lot at Record Street. Being at least one block away means it could not have been Givens.

James Jarman - 5th floor window below sniper's lair. Photo evidence shows he was on the 5^th floor.

Carl Edward Jones - sitting on the front steps / out by Elm Street with Truly, Campbell and Reid. Saw the President slump after being shot. He cannot be Prayer Man.

Roy Edward Lewis - standing with some ladies in the middle of the front steps. Roy Edwards is almost certainly the African American watching from behind the West Column in Altgen’s. He is not Prayer Man.

Billy Lovelady - front steps. Gone from the Steps well before the Darnell shot was taken. Corroborated testimony and film show he is not Prayer Man.

Harold Norman - 5th floor window below sniper's lair. Photo evidence shows he was on the 5^th floor.

Eddie Piper – sitting on a box watching through the second window from the corner on the 1st floor. Location and other factors rule him out.

Troy Eugene West - making coffee on the 1st floor. Did not know JFK had been shot until people rushed into building talking about it. He is not Prayer Man.

Bonnie Ray Wiliams - 5th floor window below sniper's lair. Photo evidence shows he was on the 5^th floor.

Who's left?

Excellent work, Richard, it's good to get these listed systematically like this.

Just a couple of small additions to copperfasten your points:

-Billy Lovelady is even more definitively ruled out as Prayer Man for the simple reason that the two show up right beside each other in the Wiegman footage:

Now unless someone is going to come forward and tell us that Prayer Man is actually a rather butch woman, we're still stuck with the mother of all questions:

Is Prayer Man none other than Lee Oswald, coke bottle in hand?

Could it really be that simple? You bet your life it could.

Except I do not see a coke in Prayer Man's hands yet,

maybe a later film will show that,

a film taken after Prayer Man has gone upstairs

to the coke machine.

Of course I make no claim to being

a photo expert.

BTW, compliments to Richard Hocking and yourself Sean

for the breakdown of TSBD employees.

You and Richard have done a fantastic job on this thread.

Edited August 22, 2013 by J. Raymond Carroll

[William Kelly]

Here's a view of the TSBD front door - a glass wall - in which the middle panel opens out.

Warren Commission Documents

Here''s a view of the TSBD front door from the inside.

JFKCountercoup2: TSBD First Floor

"Prayer Man" was standing on the other side of the glass in front of the heater.

He would not have to get out of the way of Baker because he is back against the glass wall.

I still want to know when this film was taken - and who took it?

It was posted by Jack McFile

L.H. Oswald Leaving TSBD November 22 1963? - YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?y=IFDccfK-RRE

It begins with a man in white jacket and white hat on the back of a three wheel motorcycle being driven by a cop with a flat hat, not a helmet. Then about 1 minute we see a another two wheel motorcycle cop with helmet park and get off (not Baker). At 1:45 the camera assumes a new position - further back and you can see the three wheeler sans passenger, still moving behind a parked DPD car with a man talking into the window. As the camera pans right, it follows a man in a dark suit and hat and the door to the TSBD is visible with a man "College Boy" - Tommy calls him, standing on the top step, as the motorcyle continues to move left to right.

"College Boy" stays on the top stairs where "Prayer Man" stood earlier - there are two Dallas policeman in uniform in a huddle talking with two men in dark suits and hats (detectives?) as a third uniformed cop listens in. A motorcyle cop with helmet is standing in front of the steps possibly walking up - At 3:25 the interior of the doorway goes black and there appears "College Boy" standing on the street walking past the mailbox - with hands in pockets, dark shirt open, white t-shirt underneath - clear side view of hair line - and possibly wearing jeans and white socks.

Is the "College Boy" seen walking away from front door of TSBD the same person on the top of the stairs and is this "Prayer Man"?

Can anyone identify the source of this film and when it is taking place?

BK

Edited August 22, 2013 by William Kelly

[J. Raymond Carroll]

You say tomato, and I say tomayto. I hear you Sean.

But can you disprove the Oswald/Baker/Truly encounter, on the floor where the coke machine was located,

whether we call it the first or the second floor, as described in the Warren Report?

How could I possibly disprove it, Ray, any more than you can prove it? There was no CCTV in the TSBD on 11/22/63.

Like Greg Parker and others, however, I do remain highly sceptical that it ever took place.

I've got the same-day testimony of Jeraldean Reid as corroboration for my version.

Who or what does Greg Parker have?

Edited August 22, 2013 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Sean Murphy]

You say tomato, and I say tomayto. I hear you Sean.

But can you disprove the Oswald/Baker/Truly encounter, on the floor where the coke machine was located,

whether we call it the first or the second floor, as described in the Warren Report?

How could I possibly disprove it, Ray, any more than you can prove it? There was no CCTV in the TSBD on 11/22/63.

Like Greg Parker and others, however, I do remain highly sceptical that it ever took place.

I've got the same-day testimony of Jeraldean Reid as corroboration for my version.

Who or what does Greg Parker have?

Ray, can you please point me to the same-day testimony of Jeraldean Reid?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Ray, can you please point me to the same-day testimony of Jeraldean Reid?

Funny you should ask, Sean, because I have been meaning

to find it again myself.

On a quick look I found this, but I will look again when I have a chance

and find Mrs. Reid's original affidavit of that fateful day. It is somewhere

in the 26 volumes.

THis is an affidavit she gave the Secret Service in early December.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10490&relPageId=798

Her story remained consistent.

Here is her Warren Commission testimony, but I promise to keep looking for her original affidavit,

where she tells the same story.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=39&relPageId=282

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=39&relPageId=282

Edited August 22, 2013 by J. Raymond Carroll