Jump to content
The Education Forum

Escape from the 6th Floor


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 62
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Jim

Thank you for the report. It´s very possible that the passenger elevator was used by the shooter to get to the sixth floor from the first and vice versa. Armstrong accounted for the help necessary. Great plan on the part of the plotters.

I doubt there were multiple shooters on the sixth floor. Multiple shooters means multiple rifles and how does one remove the rifles?

Two questions for Armstrong: (1) The explanation of ingress and egress requires that the electricity be turned off and turned on twice. Was the electricity shut off twice within the TSBD? (2) The Oswald look-alike was seen walking towards the front of the building by Mrs. Reid. If anything I would think the Oswald look-alike would be trying to get to the annex to wait for his ride. Since Armstrong believes Truly and Baker met Oswald on the second floor, couldn´t the man Mrs Reid saw be the other Oswald?

Edited by George Sawtelle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, George.  I agree about the multiple shooters.  That was just poor wording on my part.  I should have said a shooter and his accomplice(s). I *think* John will agree.

I'll try to get your questions to him later today, but I'm pretty sure for #1 he'll say the evidence suggests the electricity only went out once for a couple of minutes, at which time the shooting took place and the shooter and accomplice(s) got into the elevator.  I'll try to get his reaction for your second question.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jim

Thank you.

The last diagram showing the first floor plan indicates that the passenger elevator accessed the basement. The shooter may have left the elevator at the basement level. He then could have reached the first floor using the stairs in the NW corner of the building and left the building through the annex with help from spotters. The two men seen by Baker on the first floor may have been the spotters.

BTW, two ¨policemen¨ were on the fire escape after the shooting. They were filmed by Mentesana. Need to correct some of the wording regarding ... no one was seen on the fire escape after the shooting.   

Edited by George Sawtelle
add info
Link to comment
Share on other sites

George,

I talked to John and, as expected, he says the evidence indicates the electricity was turned off only once, and that seemed to be during and immediately after the shooting.  John thinks it’s possible that the men got to the sixth floor by entering the elevator shaft and climbing up the ladder inside, the shooter throwing the rifle over his shoulder and carrying it up using the sling.  It’s just John’s hypothesis.  The single electrical outage kept the elevator at the fourth floor until the men on the sixth floor could get back into it after the shooting.

Mrs. Reid provided a real problem for the WC because the WC knew that Oswald (Harvey) was wearing a brown shirt when Truly and Baker encountered him in the lunchroom and when he was in the cab.  But the Oswald (Lee) Mrs. Reid saw was wearing a white shirt and carrying a coke.  If you read her testimony, you can see Belin trying to find a way to get this Oswald back to get that shirt, but she said it didn’t happen.

Mrs. REID. What he was wearing, he had on a white T-shirt and some kind of wash trousers. What color I couldn't tell you. 
Mr. BELIN. I am going to hand you what has been marked Commission Exhibit, first 157 and then 158, and I will ask you if either or both look like they might have been the trousers that you saw him wear or can you tell? 
Mrs. REID. I just couldn't be positive about that. I would rather not say, because I just cannot. 
Mr. BELIN. Do you remember whether he had any shirt or jacket on over his T-shirt? 
Mrs. REID. He did not. He did not have any jacket on. 

The entrance to the second floor office was close to the lunchroom and both were close to the rear stairs.

2nd_Floor_Plan.jpg

===============================================

Mrs. Robert Reid was standing next to Roy Truly and O.V Campbell when the
shooting began, a few feet in front of the steps to the TSBD. Mrs. Reid told Campbell
she thought the shots came from their building, whereupon Campbell said, "Oh, Mrs.
Reid, no, it came from the grassy area down this way." Mrs. Reid then turned around
and walked up the front steps, through the entrance door, and up the front stairs to the
second floor. She then walked 20 feet to the front door of the TSBD office and opened
the door. As she entered the office Mrs. Reid saw a man wearing a white shirt enter the
office through the rear door, which was close to the lunchroom and rear stairs. Mrs. Reid,
who had seen Oswald a few times in the building but did not know his name, thought
that it strange that one of the warehouse boys would walk through the office at that time.97


NOTE: It was Lee Oswald who walked through the office, but did not work in the

warehouse and did not realize the TSBD office was off-limits to warehouse personnel.


As Lee Oswald walked past Mrs. Reid wearing a white t-shirt and holding a bottle
of coke in his right hand, she told him the President had been shot. Oswald mumbled
something and walked through the front door of the office and down the front stairs
which led to the main entrance.98 WC attorney David Belin asked Mrs. Reid how she
knew the man she saw walk through her office was Lee Harvey Oswald. Mrs. Reid
answered, "Because it looked just like him." Nov 22-39


Lee Oswald and the man with the brown jacket were now safely out of the building. Harvey Oswald, wearing a long-sleeved brown shirt, was in the 2nd floor lunchroom where he would soon be confronted by Dallas Police Officer Marion Baker and Roy Truly.
 

--From Harvey and Lee, p. 817, Copyright © 2003 by John Armstrong

===============================================

John believes that there were probably three conspirators on the sixth floor and in the stopped elevator immediately beneath it.  He suspects that, when leaving the TSBD, these men would not want to leave as a group but immediately break up and go their own ways as quickly and quietly as possible.  Note this paragraph from his write-up:

Richard Randolph Carr observed a man looking out the top floor of the TSBD moments before the shooting. Carr, like Carolyn Walther, said the man was wearing a light brown coat. He described the man as having an athletic build and wearing horn rim glasses and a hat. Minutes after the assassination Carr saw the same man walking toward him on Houston, constantly looking back over his shoulder. The man turned east on Commerce St, walked one block to Record St., and got into a 1961 or 1962 light colored Nash Rambler station wagon. The author believes this vehicle drove north on Record St., turned left on Elm, picked up LEE Oswald by the grassy knoll at 12:40 PM, and was last seen by Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig driving under the triple overpass. 

Also, on the elevator access, John said that WC diagrams indicate there was no access from the basement or the fifth floor but, as a building contractor, he understands when some sort of access for workers and inspectors would be needed at the top and bottom of the shaft.  I’ll try to remember to tell him about the cops on the fire escape.  Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jim

Thank you.

The last drawing of Armstrong´s report indicates the elevator accesses the basement through 4th floor. The lettering is in blue.

However if there is a misprint concerning the basement the shooter could still access the basement through the shaft under the elevator. There must be an access from the basement to the elevator shaft to work on equipment. The shooter could use the vent in the ceiling of the elevator climb on to the roof of the elevator and down the ladder to the shaft under the elevator. Then use the access to get into the basement.

There is absolutely no need for the shooter to leave the passenger elevator onto the second floor, especially with the other Oswald possibly in the building. Too much risk the plan blows up. Of course I believe Baker´s and Trully´s testimony about meeting Oswald is fake.

Oswald did not need to rush down the stairs to get to the lunchroom. He worked in the building and could have blended in on any of the bottom floors without arousing suspicion, assuming he was the shooter as per the Warren Commission.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are some good plausible points about this (EXCEPT the HL clone portion) like the lights going out and that kind of thing. I personally don't think the shooting took place from the TSDB at all.  It was merely the "stage" to blame Oswald, what with the fake piece of junk weapon, the thrown down shells, and so on. But would they really have gone through all of this climbing up and through the shafts and that kind of thing?  It seems risky and because I don't believe the shots came from that building anyway, there was no need to go through the elaborate climbing through the elevators and so forth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

all good theoretics (why isn't that a word?!), but by them you all imply that you put no stock in the multiple witnesses - reliable ones - who saw, and described, more than one person on 6 in more than one window - with guns, some of them.

i'm not usually one to put stock in eye-witness testimony; according to the Innocence Project the vast majority of bad convictions are made based on bad eye-witness testimony (that which once upon a time was considered typically the best evidence - ha), but the congruence of these witnesses' statements lead me to believe their veracity more than a hypothesis that it would be 'just too difficult to remove the rifles' - while they were removing themselves, which i tend to think would be a bit harder.there is no question that at least some of the Dallas Police Dept - and likely some officers of same - were involved to some extent. so hiding stuff in boxes to be removed later doesn't seem to me to be a problem at all.

there are plenty of ways items - and people - could have been secreted away in the ensuing chaos - especially since we know next to nothing about the people who had been laying floor for Mr Byrd for the previous month.

after all, they got a crappy rifle up there. right?

Edited by Glenn Nall
Link to comment
Share on other sites

in this article is this statement which seems to convey the mystery that many people see in this scene, but that i cannot find:

"On November 22, a few minutes before 12:30 PM, two [or more] men were seen on the 6th floor. Minutes after the shooting these men were gone (my emphasis). How did they manage to leave the TSBD without being heard or seen by anyone? ..."

Now, someone correct me where i'm wrong, but the little I know about the interior operations of the TSBD is that it was not under guard - in fact it housed some offices of unrelated companies (at least two publishing companies which are most likely to have clients and potential clients visiting...?) - AND there were some subcontractors "replacing some flooring" on 5, 6 and 7...?

Why is it unlikely that there would be total strangers - persons likely not known to many of the regulars to the building - who would be missed when they "were gone"...?

am I missing something?

it seems to me that before the motorcade arrived and after the shooting occurred there was a flow of people in and out the front door there on Elm - until the DPD sealed the doors, of course.

what's the mystery here if some non-employees walked out?

 

Ingress, egress from the TSBD

I used to date a girl named Ingress, but I had to break up with her - she dated, like, way too many guys.

Edited by Glenn Nall
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Lee Oswald and the man with the brown jacket were now safely out of the building. Harvey Oswald, wearing a long-sleeved brown shirt, was in the 2nd floor lunchroom where he would soon be confronted by Dallas Police Officer Marion Baker and Roy Truly.

It absolutely boggles my mind that - after "they" had spent so many years and so much effort cultivating such a person - there was any conceivable reason to risk all that by putting two indistinguishable people - one of whom was about to take the blame for murdering the President - in the same building, even for but those few minutes.

makes NO sense to me whatsoever (unless it was simply to confuse testimony? - there are easier ways to do THAT). if just ONE person - like Roy Truly - happened to see BOTH of them within a few minutes, wearing different clothing - then THE ENTIRE MISSION (I can't believe i'm using that word) WOULD HAVE BEEN FLUSHED.

JUST LIKE THAT.

Truly: "I saw Oswald on 2 wearing a brown shirt and drinking a Coke and i also saw Oswald on 1 wearing a white shirt - all while the President of the US was being murdered in our front yard."

Operation destroyed, just like that.

Risk/reward insanity. No?

Edited by Glenn Nall
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Glenn Nall said:

It absolutely boggles my mind that - after "they" had spent so many years and so much effort cultivating such a person - there was any conceivable reason to risk all that by putting two indistinguishable people - one of whom was about to take the blame for murdering the President - in the same building, even for but those few minutes.

Amen to that, Glenn!

Common Sense Break (below)!! ....

"John Armstrong actually went on to publish a 983-page book in 2003 called 'Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald', in which he carries his fantasy about a double Oswald to such absurd lengths that not only doesn't it deserve to be dignified in the main text of my book, but I resent even having to waste a word on it in this endnote. .... Obviously, if Armstrong had a source for any of the things he charges, he would be only too eager to give it. Instead, his only source is his exceptionally fertile imagination. .... On the day of the assassination, Armstrong has both Lee Harvey Oswald and Harvey Oswald, two people who are spitting images of each other, in the Depository. .... At the moment of the assassination, HARVEY Oswald was in the second-floor lunchroom having lunch and LEE Harvey Oswald was on the sixth floor firing at Kennedy. .... Lee Harvey Oswald escaped arrest, but Armstrong doesn't tell his readers what happened to him thereafter, though...he tells them near the beginning of the book that he may be "very much alive".

[...]

Perhaps most important, Armstrong doesn’t deign to tell us why this incredibly elaborate and difficult scheme was necessary. I mean, if the CIA were willing to frame the Russian refugee for Kennedy’s murder by setting him up as a patsy, why not simply frame the real Lee Harvey Oswald? After all, both the real Oswald and the imposter Oswald were, per Armstrong, recruited by the same conspirators at the CIA and both were being “handled” by them. .... So before Armstrong even writes the first word of his long tribute to absurdity, the premise for his whole book is seen to be prodigiously ridiculous.

[...]

If we are to believe Armstrong, Harvey Oswald was out there for years doing his darnedest to impersonate Lee Oswald. But Armstrong doesn’t explain why Harvey’s CIA handlers would have him do (or not do) obvious things that Lee was (or was not) doing. For instance, he writes that Lee Harvey Oswald “was seen driving cars in Dallas, Irving, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Alice, Pleasanton, Freer, and other locations.” But, he says, “Harvey Oswald did not have a driver’s license . . . He rode a bus to downtown Dallas in the morning and returned by bus at the end of the day.” (Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p.757)

John (John Armstrong), what type of incredibly sloppy impersonation is this? They find a young man who, according to you, looks almost exactly like Lee Harvey Oswald, and then they have him acting like anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald?

[...]

Armstrong’s theory is so looney that it even completely confuses him. For instance, much of it is based on the premise that although Lee and Harvey look very much alike (after all, the CIA got Harvey to impersonate Lee), there are sufficient differences, though slight, to prove that two different people are shown in the photographs. But on page 65 of his book, he completely forgets the above premise and suggests that a photo of Lee taken by his brother Robert at the Bronx Zoo in New York, supposedly during the spring of 1953, doesn’t look anything like Lee.

Armstrong misleads his readers by telling them the Bronx Zoo photo (CE 282, 16 H 802) is of a “small, thin, almost frail-looking boy,” and very different from the “tall, husky” boy shown in a photo (CE 282, 16 H 802) taken a year earlier in Fort Worth. (Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p.65) But the Bronx photo shows Lee to be a perfectly normal, healthy young boy. And he looks just like the Lee Harvey Oswald (except that he is a little younger) shown in the earlier Fort Worth photo as well as in earlier photos of Oswald in Armstrong’s companion publication of photos and documents (pp.2–6). Moreover, there is no way to discern from the Bronx Zoo photo that the boy depicted is of a different height. How was it possible for Armstrong to determine that?

[...]

What I will say that’s good about 'Harvey and Lee' is that Armstrong did an enormous amount of good research on Lee Harvey Oswald’s background and life that will be of use to researchers in the future, and Armstrong deserves to be commended for that. What prevented his biography of Oswald from being more valuable is not only the fact that he contaminated it throughout by the fun and games he plays with the two Oswalds, but that he relied hardly at all on by far the best source for Oswald’s history from Minsk to Dealey Plaza, Marina Oswald’s story as told in Priscilla McMillan’s seminal book, 'Marina and Lee'."

-- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 565-575 of "Reclaiming History" (Endnotes)

Edited by David Von Pein
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Michael Walton said:

There are some good plausible points about this (EXCEPT the HL clone portion) like the lights going out and that kind of thing. I personally don't think the shooting took place from the TSDB at all.  It was merely the "stage" to blame Oswald, what with the fake piece of junk weapon, the thrown down shells, and so on. But would they really have gone through all of this climbing up and through the shafts and that kind of thing?  It seems risky and because I don't believe the shots came from that building anyway, there was no need to go through the elaborate climbing through the elevators and so forth.

Mike,

I haven't really read this thread yet, just skimmed over it a little bit to see what it's all about, but when I read the first sentence of your post (this one, right here), I thought I'd better mention to you Jon G. Tidd's idea that a kind of "Two Oswalds" project might have started right after the guy ("Harvey" ?  i.e., the guy who was killed by Jack Ruby on 11/24/6) entered the Marine Corps in 1956 (or was it 1957?), and that the bad guys might have fabricated and "retrofitted" good guy "Harvey's" and bad guy "Lee's" childhoods, document-wise, to make it look like they were one-and-the-same person going back to 1947, or so.  This theory of Mr Tidd's is a lot easier for me "to swallow" than the full-on "Harvey and Lee and the Two Marguerites" theory that you, Tracy, Jeremy, and I have been arguing against.

--  Tommy :sun  

Edited by Thomas Graves
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tom, no problem and understood.  The only impersonating I think happened was during the lead up to 11/22.  Meaning, there was a guy at the car dealership making outrageous claims (they must have forgotten though that LHO didn't even drive - LOL) and saying he's going to come into a great deal of money.  I can see that happening as a way to make him look like a troublemaker so when he's arrested, these same people could come forward and say "Yeah, I remember him."  This was probably the back-up plan (or not) as I don't even think he was supposed to survive his "escape" from the TSBD.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From Armstrong's article:

Quote

The man charged with assassinating President Kennedy was impersonated on many occasions in the months preceding the assassination. The author believes this impersonation continued at the TSBD on 11/22/63, and the impersonator's image was captured by Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Dillard in the west end window on the 6th floor, only seconds after the shooting ... [In] the man's image from Dillard's film ... he is wearing a light-colored shirt as described by witnesses. The author believes the impersonator was LEE Oswald.

The image referred to ( http://harveyandlee.net/TSBD_Elevator/6th_Floor_Oz.jpg ) is of Badgeman quality. Several of the superimposed dotted lines don't actually correspond to tonal boundaries in the image. Take away the dotted lines and you'd have trouble discerning any type of human face there, let alone one that looks like Oswald. The whole 'Harvey and Lee and Marguerite and Marguerite' concept requires a religious-fundamentalist level of faith, but only the most uncritical believers will go along with this part.

Armstrong's article continues:

Quote

The impersonator left Dealey Plaza in a Nash Rambler, shot and killed JD Tippit, was in the balcony of the Texas Theater when Harvey Oswald was arrested, was taken out the back of the Texas Theater after HARVEY Oswald was taken out the front of the theater, was seen an hour later driving a 1957 Plymouth (owned by Carl Mather, Tippit's best friend), and was seen boarding a military transport plane near downtown Dallas by Robert Vinson.

Leaving aside the facts that 'Harvey' was a fictional character and that there was only one historical Lee Harvey Oswald, I'm curious about the last few words. There are some improbable aspects to Robert Vinson's claim:

Firstly, the lookalike is supposed to have hung around in Dallas for nearly two hours after the arrest of the real, historical Lee Harvey Oswald. Surely a more sensible option would have been to escape quietly by road straight away, or even to hide until the fuss died down. If the plot required a conspirator to be whisked away from the scene of the crime, sending a large military transport plane to Dallas from Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington DC, a distance of around a thousand miles, would have been one of the least practical methods available. According to Vinson, the plane's next stop was Roswell, so perhaps the lookalike is at this very moment enjoying a comfortable retirement in a nearby galaxy.

Secondly, what evidence is there, apart from Vinson's claim, that a large military plane landed and took off on a patch of land close to the downtown area? You'd expect something like that to be widely noticed at any time, let alone three hours after the biggest domestic news event for years had occurred just a mile or so away.

I know that the Vinson episode rounds off the storyline nicely, and was used in that way by James Douglass in JFK and the Unspeakable (on pp.298-304), which contains a far more credible narrative than that of Armstrong. But it seems very unlikely to be true.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Glenn

There may have been multiple people on the sixth floor, but there was only one shooter. Only one rifle. The plotters would never leave a rifle in a box and walk off to recover it later. Too much risk.

Any unknown male, client or otherwise, seen in the building would arouse suspicion. The plotters would devise a plan which includes no unknown men in the building during and immediately after the shooting. Except for the shooters and his spotters the plotters created a plan using men who worked in the building. If you had been tasked with the planning maybe you would have left unknown men in the building but the guys who planned the Kennedy assassination did not. Now there could have been unknown men who worked for the plotters seen in the building after the shooting but the plotters would plan to minimize risk.

Michael

A bunch of people say the shots came from the TSBD.

David

Cannot get into Armstrong and his Two Oswald theory. Another thread maybe.

Jeremy

A flight plan for the transport must be submitted. Headed to Dallas to pick up a shooter in the Kennedy assassination. A transport out of Wash DC makes perfect sense, Hide the true nature of the flight. As far as it arousing suspicion landing where it landed, after the assassination anything would have made sense. A huge plane was needed to fly that guy to South America asap.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...