Oswald Leaving TSBD?

[Robert Prudhomme]

[...]

[...]

Here is a direct link to a thread containing static images and moving Gifs ot the man and the area in question.

It's a long thread with many interesting diversions and fantastic graphical analysis by some of the most talented and dedicated photo analysis people in the JFK community.

Here is one example of the standard of stabilized Gif construction which is a major feature at my forum.

This one shows clearly the man in question, and Baker running towards the entrance.

Credit Gerda Dunckel

Enjoy the thread - Link Below

http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,6724.0.html

Has anyone noticed the person who slowly stands up or goes up one step, backwards, in front of Prayer Man?

Also, notice the suit-wearing man at the base of the steps on the left who waves Baker up the steps with his left hand and pivots out of the way. Could that be Roy Truly?

--Tommy

PS: Unrelated comment. It seems that the main purpose of this thread is to try to prove that "Prayer Man" was Oswald and, therefore, that Oswald couldn't possibly have been a shooter.

Rhetorical question: If we can do that, would it prove that Oswald wasn't wittingly involved in the conspiracy? (No, I'm not saying that he was.)

augmented and bumped

Hello Thomas

That is a good question. It certainly would prove, beyond all doubt, that Oswald was not the shooter if he could be positively identified as "Prayer Man".

However, that being said, I believe there is enough proof from persons such as Geneva Hine, Carolyn Arnold (the WC was wise not to call on her to testify) and, yes, even Officer Baker, in the duplicity (multiplicity?) of his various notes and statements, that put Oswald on the lower floors of the TSBD at the time of the shooting.

Edited August 26, 2013 by Robert Prudhomme

[William Kelly]

Many TSBD witnesses were required to make out police reports on the day of the assassination or shortly thereafter, and then to testify before the Warren Commission. Others were asked to return to make out affidavits, most of which can be found here:

JFK Asaassination witness page

Then in March 1964, probably at the request of the Warren Commission,the FBI obtained the statements of all or most of the TSBD employees - which resulted in these one page reports that gives the name, address, job description and whereabouts at the time of the assassination. They were also asked if they saw Oswald at the time of the assassination, if they knew him and if they saw any strangers in the building that day.

www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1381.pdf

While these statements are self-serving, not only to the witness but for the FBI and their purposes - they are useful in determining who worked there, what they did and where they were at the time of shooting, as well as where they thought the shots originated and what they did immediately afterwards.

It's interesting how many didn't return to work or were not permitted back into the building, which belies Truly's assertion that it was odd for Oswald to have left.

I like the idea of a timeline, but doubt it will be one we can agree on if the Second Floor Lunchroom incident was fabricated.

Edited August 26, 2013 by William Kelly

[Sean Murphy]

On 23 September 1964 Roy Truly and Marrion Baker were asked to go back on the record to clarify an important point: was Oswald on his own in the second-floor lunchroom when they saw him just after the assassination? There had been press reports--based in large part upon statements made by Jesse Curry on 11/23/63--that Oswald was with others in the room when the officer came in.

Baker dictated a statement to FBI Special Agent Richard J. Burnett. It has become notorious because of a certain deletion evident in Burnett's handwritten sheet:

Why did Baker originally say "drinking a coke", only to have it crossed out and the deletion initialled ("M.L.B.")?

Is not this little slip compelling evidence that--contrary to what Baker and Truly testified to the WC--Oswald had already bought the coke by the time of the incident? And does this not bear out Oswald's claim in custody (as reported by Fritz and Bookhout) on this head? And does it not deprive him of even more time to get down from the sixth floor?

Not so fast. I agree that Baker's little slip is very telling indeed, devastating even, but what it is telling is not what people have generally suspected.

To understand the significance of "drinking a coke" we need to note two other little slips in its immediate vicinity. Though they have achieved far less attention, they are in my view of no less importance.

**

The first relates to the floor on which the lunchroom was located:

Second or third floor: this uncertain either-or formula echoes in an uncanny way Baker's original 11/22/63 affidavit, where he talks of having seen a man walking away from the rear stairway on "the third or fourth floor".

At least on 11/22 Baker might be said to have some excuse in that he was unfamiliar with the building.

But this is different. Here we have Baker, on the far side of having taken part in multiple WC reconstructions of his movements inside the building, and on the far side of having testified in excruciating detail on the lunchroom incident to the WC, still showing uncertainty as to which bloody floor the incident happened on.

**

The second interesting item is Baker's description of the circumstances of his first sighting of Oswald:

I saw a man standing in the lunch room: even if we factor out the fact that this phrase originally closes with the words drinking a coke, it is still very troubling.

It need hardly be pointed out that it does not chime with Baker's 11/22 affidavit words (which again use the very same phrase construction): I saw a man walking away from the stairway.

That's just the half of it however. This phrase doesn't even chime with the story that Baker had told to the WC, the story of a man spotted while walking towards and then into the lunchroom.

**

What, we must yet again ask ourselves, is going on here?

To get a handle on Baker's very weird Sep 64 statement, we need to bear in mind an important point made by Paul Rigby yesterday:

"The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisation, many of them subsequently abandoned."

I submit that the second-floor lunchroom incident is not just a fiction, it is a fiction contrived in haste and panic on the evening of the assassination. The authorities knew that Oswald had an alibi and they knew that something, anything, had to be done fast to liquidate it. It didn't much matter what that something was, as long as it got Oswald away from the damned front entrance at the time of the President's passing (no pun intended). The details could be worried about later

**

So what did they do?

In order to maintain maximum consonance between the true story already circulating and already being told by Oswald in custody, and in order to make things as easy as possible on Baker and Truly, they chose the simplest operation possible:

The Wholesale Switcheroo.

Fact: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the front entrance

became...

Fiction: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the second-floor lunchroom.

The details could be refined later.

**

Marrion Baker's fellow motorcycle officer Stavis Ellis told Larry Sneed that Baker was known to be not "real bright". In fact, he was thought to be "slow" and was nicknamed "Momma Son". Harold Weisberg, years earlier, remarked that Baker was thought by his colleagues to be a "dope".

Put the case that this verdict, however unkind, had at least a grain of truth in it.

And put the case that Baker, at some point after the assassination, was fed the first draft of the lunchroom story as follows:

You saw a man standing in the second-floor lunchroom drinking a coke. Got that? A man. Standing in the lunchroom. Second floor. Drinking a coke.

Going in to give his Sep 64 statement, Baker has not been heavily prepped in the way that he most assuredly was going into his WC session. The 'finished' script is no longer fresh in his memory.

What happens? He gets successive drafts of the Oswald Encounter Story almost comically confused with one another. He talks like a man who is not drawing on primary memory to describe an actually experienced incident. That's because he is describing an event that never happened.

• When he writes (and crosses out) "drinking a coke", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom.
• When he writes of having seen the man "standing in the lunch room", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom.
• And when he writes (and crosses out part of) "second or third floor", he is not betraying uncertainty as to where the incident had really. empirically taken place, he is...

Well, we must hold that thought because it brings us to Baker's all-important 11/22/63 affidavit story.

[Robert Prudhomme]

On 23 September 1964 Roy Truly and Marrion Baker were asked to go back on the record to clarify an important point: was Oswald on his own in the second-floor lunchroom when they saw him just after the assassination? There had been press reports--based in large part upon statements made by Jesse Curry on 11/23/63--that Oswald was with others in the room when the officer came in.

Baker dictated a statement to FBI Special Agent Richard J. Burnett. It has become notorious because of a certain deletion evident in Burnett's handwritten sheet:

Why did Baker originally say "drinking a coke", only to have it crossed out and the deletion initialled ("M.L.B.")?

Is not this little slip compelling evidence that--contrary to what Baker and Truly testified to the WC--Oswald had already bought the coke by the time of the incident? And does this not bear out Oswald's claim in custody (as reported by Fritz and Bookhout) on this head? And does it not deprive him of even more time to get down from the sixth floor?

Not so fast. I agree that Baker's little slip is very telling indeed, devastating even, but what it is telling is not what people have generally suspected.

To understand the significance of "drinking a coke" we need to note two other little slips in its immediate vicinity. Though they have achieved far less attention, they are in my view of no less importance.

**

The first relates to the floor on which the lunchroom was located:

Second or third floor: this uncertain either-or formula echoes in an uncanny way Baker's original 11/22/63 affidavit, where he talks of having seen a man walking away from the rear stairway on "the third or fourth floor".

At least on 11/22 Baker might be said to have some excuse in that he was unfamiliar with the building.

But this is different. Here we have Baker, on the far side of having taken part in multiple WC reconstructions of his movements inside the building, and on the far side of having testified in excruciating detail on the lunchroom incident to the WC, still showing uncertainty as to which bloody floor the incident happened on.

**

The second interesting item is Baker's description of the circumstances of his first sighting of Oswald:

I saw a man standing in the lunch room: even if we factor out the fact that this phrase originally closes with the words drinking a coke, it is still very troubling.

It need hardly be pointed out that it does not chime with Baker's 11/22 affidavit words (which again use the very same phrase construction): I saw a man walking away from the stairway.

That's just the half of it however. This phrase doesn't even chime with the story that Baker had told to the WC, the story of a man spotted while walking towards and then into the lunchroom.

**

What, we must yet again ask ourselves, is going on here?

To get a handle on Baker's very weird Sep 64 statement, we need to bear in mind an important point made by Paul Rigby yesterday:

"The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisation, many of them subsequently abandoned."

I submit that the second-floor lunchroom incident is not just a fiction, it is a fiction contrived in haste and panic on the evening of the assassination. The authorities knew that Oswald had an alibi and they knew that something, anything, had to be done fast to liquidate it. It didn't much matter what that something was, as long as it got Oswald away from the damned front entrance at the time of the President's passing (no pun intended). The details could be worried about later

**

So what did they do?

In order to maintain maximum consonance between the true story already circulating and already being told by Oswald in custody, and in order to make things as easy as possible on Baker and Truly, they chose the simplest operation possible:

The Wholesale Switcheroo.

Fact: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the front entrance

became...

Fiction: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the second-floor lunchroom.

The details could be refined later.

**

Marrion Baker's fellow motorcycle officer Stavis Ellis told Larry Sneed that Baker was known to be not "real bright". In fact, he was thought to be "slow" and was nicknamed "Momma Son". Harold Weisberg, years earlier, remarked that Baker was thought by his colleagues to be a "dope".

Put the case that this verdict, however unkind, had at least a grain of truth in it.

And put the case that Baker, at some point after the assassination, was fed the first draft of the lunchroom story as follows:

You saw a man standing in the second-floor lunchroom drinking a coke. Got that? A man. Standing in the lunchroom. Second floor. Drinking a coke.

Going in to give his Sep 64 statement, Baker has not been heavily prepped in the way that he most assuredly was going into his WC session. The 'finished' script is no longer fresh in his memory.

What happens? He gets successive drafts of the Oswald Encounter Story almost comically confused with one another. He talks like a man who is not drawing on primary memory to describe an actually experienced incident. That's because he is describing an event that never happened.

• When he writes (and crosses out) "drinking a coke", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom.
• When he writes of having seen the man "standing in the lunch room", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom.
• And when he writes (and crosses out part of) "second or third floor", he is not betraying uncertainty as to where the incident had really. empirically taken place, he is...

Well, we must hold that thought because it brings us to Baker's all-important 11/22/63 affidavit story.

Excellent and well thought analysis. Do tell us more.

[Pat Speer]

Fritz's notes say that Lee said he was

"out with Bill Shelley in front,"

As Richard Hocking points out, the only time he could have been out front with Shelley

was prior to and during the actual shooting, because Shelley left the front steps immediately after

and went to explore the grassy knoll.

It is a long time since I seriously studied the interrogation reports, but I propose a theory and invite pot-shots from members:

This answer by Oz does not appear in Hosty or Bookhout, correct?

If not, why not?

I suggest it happened BEFORE Hosty and Bookhout arrived,

and so the FBI reports are foggy because Hosty and Bookhout are relying on what Fritz told them.

I thought I'd run that up the flagpole

and see if anyone salutes!

"out with Bill Shelley in front," when taken in context, suggests Oswald told Fritz he saw Bill Shelley when leaving the building. Some have tried to twist it into being a claim by Oswald he was out front at the time of the shooting. But we've been over this and that doesn't make a lot of sense, seeing as none of those present recalled such a thing.

Of course, one could say they all lied.

[Pat Speer]

Hello Thomas

That is a good question. It certainly would prove, beyond all doubt, that Oswald was not the shooter if he could be positively identified as "Prayer Man".

However, that being said, I believe there is enough proof from persons such as Geneva Hine, Carolyn Arnold (the WC was wise not to call on her to testify) and, yes, even Officer Baker, in the duplicity (multiplicity?) of his various notes and statements, that put Oswald on the lower floors of the TSBD at the time of the shooting.

Geneva Hine is NOT a witness for Oswald being on the lower floors--at least not at this point. Groden said he spoke to someone. If I understand correctly, people ASSUME it was Hine. He has not released a video or a tape of this interview. Failing that, we have hearsay about what someone might have said vs. what they said in signed statements and testimony.

I've met Groden, and like him, and consider him to be a serious researcher. But he has made over-blown statements at times. And there's also the age factor. Hine--assuming it was Hine Groden spoke to--was an old old woman when Groden spoke to her, and her memory--for all we know--was shoddy, at best.

[Richard Hocking]

Fritz's notes say that Lee said he was

"out with Bill Shelley in front,"

As Richard Hocking points out, the only time he could have been out front with Shelley

was prior to and during the actual shooting, because Shelley left the front steps immediately after

and went to explore the grassy knoll.

It is a long time since I seriously studied the interrogation reports, but I propose a theory and invite pot-shots from members:

This answer by Oz does not appear in Hosty or Bookhout, correct?

If not, why not?

I suggest it happened BEFORE Hosty and Bookhout arrived,

and so the FBI reports are foggy because Hosty and Bookhout are relying on what Fritz told them.

I thought I'd run that up the flagpole

and see if anyone salutes!

"out with Bill Shelley in front," when taken in context

What context are you referring to Pat?

, suggests Oswald told Fritz he saw Bill Shelley when leaving the building. Some have tried to twist it into being a claim by Oswald he was out front at the time of the shooting.

Nearly everyone agrees that Fritz's notes are vague. The placement, however, of Oswald being near Shelley is not. And there is a very limited window when Oswald could have been in the company of Shelley. The possibility does exist that Prayer Man is Oswald.

But we've been over this and that doesn't make a lot of sense, seeing as none of those present recalled such a thing.

This issue was discussed earlier in this very thread by Sean, myself and others. We decided there were visible suggestions in the film and photo record that Prayer Man could have made a late entry to the back of the stairs while the attention of the other TSBD employees on the stairs were focused on the Motorcade approaching, passing them, and then the subsequent chaos when the shots were fired.

Of course, one could say they all lied.

We can not rule out the possibility that some individuals may have lied. But another alternative is that many in the group never turned around to see who was behind them during those moments after the Presidential Limo turned onto Elm.

Edited August 27, 2013 by Richard Hocking

[Richard Hocking]

On 23 September 1964 Roy Truly and Marrion Baker were asked to go back on the record to clarify an important point: was Oswald on his own in the second-floor lunchroom when they saw him just after the assassination? There had been press reports--based in large part upon statements made by Jesse Curry on 11/23/63--that Oswald was with others in the room when the officer came in.

Baker dictated a statement to FBI Special Agent Richard J. Burnett. It has become notorious because of a certain deletion evident in Burnett's handwritten sheet:

Why did Baker originally say "drinking a coke", only to have it crossed out and the deletion initialled ("M.L.B.")?

Is not this little slip compelling evidence that--contrary to what Baker and Truly testified to the WC--Oswald had already bought the coke by the time of the incident? And does this not bear out Oswald's claim in custody (as reported by Fritz and Bookhout) on this head? And does it not deprive him of even more time to get down from the sixth floor?

Not so fast. I agree that Baker's little slip is very telling indeed, devastating even, but what it is telling is not what people have generally suspected.

To understand the significance of "drinking a coke" we need to note two other little slips in its immediate vicinity. Though they have achieved far less attention, they are in my view of no less importance.

**

The first relates to the floor on which the lunchroom was located:

Second or third floor: this uncertain either-or formula echoes in an uncanny way Baker's original 11/22/63 affidavit, where he talks of having seen a man walking away from the rear stairway on "the third or fourth floor".

At least on 11/22 Baker might be said to have some excuse in that he was unfamiliar with the building.

But this is different. Here we have Baker, on the far side of having taken part in multiple WC reconstructions of his movements inside the building, and on the far side of having testified in excruciating detail on the lunchroom incident to the WC, still showing uncertainty as to which bloody floor the incident happened on.

**

The second interesting item is Baker's description of the circumstances of his first sighting of Oswald:

I saw a man standing in the lunch room: even if we factor out the fact that this phrase originally closes with the words drinking a coke, it is still very troubling.

It need hardly be pointed out that it does not chime with Baker's 11/22 affidavit words (which again use the very same phrase construction): I saw a man walking away from the stairway.

That's just the half of it however. This phrase doesn't even chime with the story that Baker had told to the WC, the story of a man spotted while walking towards and then into the lunchroom.

**

What, we must yet again ask ourselves, is going on here?

To get a handle on Baker's very weird Sep 64 statement, we need to bear in mind an important point made by Paul Rigby yesterday:

"The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisation, many of them subsequently abandoned."

I submit that the second-floor lunchroom incident is not just a fiction, it is a fiction contrived in haste and panic on the evening of the assassination. The authorities knew that Oswald had an alibi and they knew that something, anything, had to be done fast to liquidate it. It didn't much matter what that something was, as long as it got Oswald away from the damned front entrance at the time of the President's passing (no pun intended). The details could be worried about later

**

So what did they do?

In order to maintain maximum consonance between the true story already circulating and already being told by Oswald in custody, and in order to make things as easy as possible on Baker and Truly, they chose the simplest operation possible:

The Wholesale Switcheroo.

Fact: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the front entrance

became...

Fiction: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the second-floor lunchroom.

The details could be refined later.

**

Marrion Baker's fellow motorcycle officer Stavis Ellis told Larry Sneed that Baker was known to be not "real bright". In fact, he was thought to be "slow" and was nicknamed "Momma Son". Harold Weisberg, years earlier, remarked that Baker was thought by his colleagues to be a "dope".

Put the case that this verdict, however unkind, had at least a grain of truth in it.

And put the case that Baker, at some point after the assassination, was fed the first draft of the lunchroom story as follows:

You saw a man standing in the second-floor lunchroom drinking a coke. Got that? A man. Standing in the lunchroom. Second floor. Drinking a coke.

Going in to give his Sep 64 statement, Baker has not been heavily prepped in the way that he most assuredly was going into his WC session. The 'finished' script is no longer fresh in his memory.

What happens? He gets successive drafts of the Oswald Encounter Story almost comically confused with one another. He talks like a man who is not drawing on primary memory to describe an actually experienced incident. That's because he is describing an event that never happened.

• When he writes (and crosses out) "drinking a coke", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom.
• When he writes of having seen the man "standing in the lunch room", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom.
• And when he writes (and crosses out part of) "second or third floor", he is not betraying uncertainty as to where the incident had really. empirically taken place, he is...

Well, we must hold that thought because it brings us to Baker's all-important 11/22/63 affidavit story.

"The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisation, many of them subsequently abandoned." Thanks for that one, Paul Rigby.

And a very thought provoking post by Sean.

It might be beneficial at this point to repost Marion Baker's original affidavit from 11/22/63: (I have bold faced certain portions)

"Friday November 22, 1963 I was riding motorcycle escort for the President of the United States. At approximately 12:30 pm I was on Houston Street and the President's car had made a left turn from Houston onto Elm Street. Just as I approached Elm Street and Houston I heard three shots. I realized those shots were rifle shots and I began to try to figure out where they came from. I decided the shots had come from the building on the northwest corner of Elm and Houston. This building is used by the Board of Education for book storage. I jumped off my motor and ran inside the building. As I entered the door I saw several people standing around. I asked these people where the stairs were. A man stepped forward and stated he was the building manager and that he would show me where the stairs were. I followed the man to the rear of the building and he said, "Let's take the elevator." The elevator was hung several floors up so we used the stairs instead. As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to the man and he turned around and came back toward me. The manager said, "I know that man, he works here." I then turned the man loose and went up to the top floor. The man I saw was a white man approximately 30 years old, 5'9", 165 pounds, dark hair and wearing a light brown jacket. "

Edited August 26, 2013 by Richard Hocking

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Hi Ray. If Oswald is Prayer Man, then he will certainly have heard at least part of the shooting. He will certainly have heard the screaming and panic out on the street. And he will certainly have seen a uniformed officer racing into the building. He would need to have been off-the-scale obtuse not to put two and two together. I mean, it's not as if he can have thought the officer was bursting to go to the toilet.

What I find really striking is precisely the fact that Prayer Man appears to be making absolutely no attempt to check out what's happening down the street. He's either frozen in shock (for reasons that are not hard to surmise for a patsified Oswald suddenly realising what the score is) or he's (and how do I put this delicately?) not remotely surprised by or curious about the horror that's unfolding out on the street (again, for reasons that--however different--are no less easy to surmise).

Sean,

A native American proverb says never judge another man

until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.

I suggest you go to Dallas and stand in Prayer Man's spot,

and be amazed at how little you could see.

I would guess from your post that you have never done so,

am I right?

And what about all the others who behaved exactly like Lee,

minus only the coke.

I got news, Sean,

maybe its a crime to drink coke in Dublin

but I checked the Dallas ordinances and confirmed

that it has never been a crime in Dallas.

Edited August 26, 2013 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Pat Speer]

I've done a good deal of reading on human memory, Sean, and note an error in your approach to Baker's statements. You seem to believe his story wouldn't wind back and forth if it was something he'd genuinely experienced. It doesn't work like that.

First, there's the linguistic factor. Baker may have had a consistent memory of Oswald's walking away from him, but have simply described it in different ways. Perhaps he'd noted a slight pause in Oswald's walk. This may have led him to say Oswald was "standing" in the room one time. Perhaps he'd heard through the grapevine that Oswald said he'd been drinking a coke. This may have led him to say he saw Oswald drinking a coke when asked about it later, as in (in the process of) drinking a coke. It could have dawned on him then that he didn't actually see a coke. So he went back and changed it. Baker's words may have changed, but his story, in his mind, may have stayed the same.

There's also this. There is no such thing as "primary memory," as in, a clear memory of an event that stays constant. When we remember something we refile it. We then remember what we just remembered, and not what actually happened. Over time, our memories become stories that we retell for maximum effect--kinda like impressionistic paintings of the event--and can not be expected to be accurate.

Now, this erosion over time is not an absolute. Our memories can be cross-filed, where we remember something in more than one context. When thinking about a punk rock girl we used to know, for example, we might remember her as having green hair, and then suddenly flash on the nickname "Sue Blue" and realize she had blue hair. The remembrance of the nickname allowed us to access a memory buried under a mountain of time.

Or not. "Sue Blue" may have been a nickname picked up before we met her. The remembrance of this nickname may have led us to replace an accurate memory--that of her having green hair--with an inaccurate one.

As far as Baker's problems with the floor, I believe you're missing something. The higher the floor, the closer Oswald was to the sniper's nest. The closer Oswald was to the sniper's nest, the greater the danger Baker faced when charging into the building, and the greater his heroism. It's kinda like the fish that got away. It got bigger, real fast. In Baker's testimony, he was reminded that it wasn't all that big. By September, however, it could very well have been growing again.

Edited August 26, 2013 by Pat Speer

[Sean Murphy]

As far as Baker's problems with the floor, I believe you're missing something. The higher the floor, the closer Oswald was to the sniper's nest. The closer Oswald was to the sniper's nest, the greater the danger Baker faced when charging into the building, and the greater his heroism. It's kinda like the fish that got away. It got bigger, real fast. In Baker's testimony, he was reminded that it wasn't all that big. By September, however, it could very well have been growing again.

On the contrary, Pat, the higher the floor the more stupid Baker looks for having let him go--and the more responsible for the death of a fellow officer.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

"out with Bill Shelley in front," when taken in context, suggests Oswald told Fritz he saw Bill Shelley when leaving the building.

I will beat Sean to the punch here and point out that we cannot pretend to know the context without a recording or transcript which we don't got and probably never will.

Some have tried to twist it into being a claim by Oswald he was out front at the time of the shooting. But we've been over this and that doesn't make a lot of sense, seeing as none of those present recalled such a thing.

Since nobody there noticed Prayer Man either, I submit that argument falls of its own weight.

Of course, one could say they all lied.

Let's not go there Pat, or we'll all end up like Harry Livingston or the professor from Minnesota.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I've done a good deal of reading on human memory...

As far as Baker's problems with the floor, I believe you're missing something. The higher the floor, the closer [baker] was to the sniper's nest. The closer [baker] was to the sniper's nest, the greater the danger Baker faced when charging into the building, and the greater his heroism. It's kinda like the fish that got away. It got bigger, real fast. In Baker's testimony, he was reminded that it wasn't all that big. By September, however, it could very well have been growing again.

Brilliant, Patrick, simply brilliant!

All due respects, Sean, I again respectfully submit that psychology cannot be learned

from dime store books.

If you want the real deal, go to Pat Speer.

http://www.patspeer.com/

PS Pat: Notice I made two changes to "typos" in your post that I am now responding to.

I bracketed the changes [ ]

Edited August 26, 2013 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Sean Murphy]

Some have tried to twist it into being a claim by Oswald he was out front at the time of the shooting. But we've been over this and that doesn't make a lot of sense, seeing as none of those present recalled such a thing.

Since nobody there noticed Prayer Man either, I submit that argument falls of its own weight.

Exactly.

And let's bear in mind that Oswald at this point is not someone whose presence will be especially noticed. He's still a couple of hours away from becoming one of the most (in)famous men on the planet. It's not as if anyone is going to be looking around going, 'Gee, I wonder if Lee Harvey Oswald's here'.

Edited August 26, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Richard Hocking]

Some have tried to twist it into being a claim by Oswald he was out front at the time of the shooting. But we've been over this and that doesn't make a lot of sense, seeing as none of those present recalled such a thing.

Since nobody there noticed Prayer Man either, I submit that argument falls of its own weight.

Exactly.

And let's bear in mind that Oswald at this point is not someone whose presence will be especially noticed. He's still a couple of hours away from becoming one of the most (in)famous men on the planet. It's not as if anyone is going to be looking around going, 'Gee, I wonder if Lee Harvey Oswald's here'.

Lee was not a real attention-grabber before 12:30 on November 22, 1963. Going through the TSBD witness testimonies, many of the employees had either never met him or never talked to him. A very low profile guy.

What do Joe Molina, Carl Edward Jones, Roy Edward Lewis, and Prayer Man all have in common?

No one else in the "Step Group" testified these individuals were on the steps.