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Where's Ruth's couch?


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Sorry Chris, maybe I’m confused. You wrote, “What I'm trying to get at here and this garage doorway would seem to confirm is that there was no door from the living room to the kitchen, that it was just a "doorless" passage from one room to the next.”

I guess I don’t understand how the photo of the kitchen to garage door confirms there was no door between the kitchen and living room.The photo that I posted above was taken in the kitchen and shows the door to the garage being open. The link below is to a photo of the same kitchen after having been remodeled.

 
In the remodeled kitchen there is a short section of wall to the right of the door leading to the garage, this is what I was calling a partition. 

On the right side of the newer photo linked above we see the door leading to the living room. My take is that is a sliding pocket door. While it’s certainly possible that the pocket door was added later, it sounds like a heroic retrofit.

Somebody claimed that one could see from the front door all the way into the kitchen, that there was no door in the doorway from the living room into the kitchen. But pocket doors can easily go unnoticed because they are a pain to open and close and are usually left in the open position - in the wall. 

I think you’re trying to prove that the living room photo of the three women, a baby, and a man shows the door in the background closed, and if so, that can’t be the door to the kitchen, it must be the hallway door. 

I think that both openings could have had doors, and I think that your best argument for the closed door in the three women photo being the hallway door is that that door is in the very corner of the room, and the kitchen door is not. In the three women photo the door-molding is extra wide on the left side, a compromise that carpenters sometimes make because it’s the simplest fudge when a doorway butts up against a wall. 

Or maybe I’m still confused.

Tom

 
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39 minutes ago, Tom Hume said:

Or maybe I’m still confused.

Nope. You are right on point.

 

41 minutes ago, Tom Hume said:

I guess I don’t understand how the photo of the kitchen to garage door confirms there was no door between the kitchen and living room.

I was making a conjecture that having two doors almost side by side, (separated I think by a 1 ft. partition), would be an awkward design with the garage door opening inward into the kitchen and two the left. I agree about the sliding partition door possibility and I'm working on that supposition as well, although I have no evidence of it yet.

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3 hours ago, Chris Newton said:

Nope. You are right on point.

 

I was making a conjecture that having two doors almost side by side, (separated I think by a 1 ft. partition), would be an awkward design with the garage door opening inward into the kitchen and two the left. I agree about the sliding partition door possibility and I'm working on that supposition as well, although I have no evidence of it yet.

Point can be a bad place to be when your in a hot lz...or on patrol, so I infer from what I've read, thankfully not experienced.  Thanks to those who have.

Tom, facing the garage door entry from the kitchen looking South on the diagram the entryway (not door) to the living room is immediately to the left.  In Chris latest picture the door to the garage is opened to the left obscuring the entryway to the living room. In an earlier picture it is evident there is no door on the entryway opening to the left from this view.   One opening to the right from this perspective would interfere with the opening of the garage door to the left.  They would bump unless both were closed when one was opened.  An architect wouldn't design it that way.  Pocket doors are not common in the single story tract houses like the Paines built in the 50's in the FW/D area.  At least not the several I've been in.

It's been nearly 24 years since I spent the evening in the kitchen.  The one time I went into the garage to see where the rifle had supposedly been stored I don't remember a living room door having to be pulled back to at least half way open to open the garage entry door from the kitchen.    

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Thanks Chris and Ron, I was confused after all - got my doors mixed up. Please disregard most of what I said.

Now that I'm possibly on the same page with you, it seems important to know the actual distance between the door leading to the garage and the doorway leading to the living room. If this distance is less than the width of the garage entry door it would be stupid (and possibly dangerous) construction, and certainly not to code. 

By the way, in the Pacific Northwest, where I live, there are many tract type homes with sliding pocket doors. 

Edited by Tom Hume
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36 minutes ago, Tom Hume said:

...it seems important to know the actual distance between the door leading to the garage and the doorway leading to the living room.

Agent Howlett: It would be 1 foot 2 inches from outside jam to outside jam.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=43#relPageId=410&tab=page

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22 minutes ago, Chris Newton said:

Agent Howlett: It would be 1 foot 2 inches from outside jam to outside jam.

And after some searching "outside jam" becomes a misnomer. Should have been "inside jam".

Ruth-Paine-4.jpg

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5 hours ago, Tom Hume said:

By the way, in the Pacific Northwest, where I live, there are many tract type homes with sliding pocket doors. 

I now have have conclusive photographic evidence that there is no sliding pocket door. I'll post an image soon.

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Good going, Chris. That's the same garage doorway - the same knot pattern in the vertical paneling, but the door-swing in your photo above has been changed, and obviously for sound reasons. I look forward to your living room/kitchen pocket door debunking.

ce435_zps83oxbdxs.jpg

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12 hours ago, Tom Hume said:

I look forward to your living room/kitchen pocket door debunking.

Thanks Tom.

I'm told that the molding is original and without visible hinge mark scars or screw holes.

rp_kitchen_jam.jpg

Edited by Chris Newton
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I made another attempt to match the floor plan with the actual home.

This was my process:

1. cropped an image of the front of 2515 W. 5th St. and added it to my new image as a "locked" layer.

2. cropped WC Exhibit #430 tightly around the floor plan and added it to the same image (as a new layer) with opacity set at 33%.

3. used the scale tool, aspect ratio locked, to resize the floor plan (CE #430 crop) to align with the corner immediately west of the front door and the eastern corner of the house.

The results are interesting, in addition to the front door entrance being offset by about 3 ft., the living room appears to be about 1 ft. longer east/west than the diagram. The garage in CE # 430 gives me the impression of not being wide enough, although this aspect could be an optical illusion or just a trick of perspective.

2515_w_5th_st.jpg

I have two theories why CE #430 may have been doctored like this. They might not be exclusive of each other.

The first and most obvious would be to add some plausibility to the supposition that Marina snuck out of the house, unbeknownst to the FBI Agents at the front door, to record the license number of Hosty's car parked down the street.

The second reason to have done it is a little more subtle.

Several Dallas Detectives testified that they could see people in the Paine house when they came around the garage, (they had parked out of sight to the west too), and before they knocked on the door. Because Ruth's testimony was that the couch was now on the north wall, to accommodate the finding of the letter, Her testimony is that she did not see them or know they were police until she opened the front door. There was a need to resolve these different accounts.

Of course, if the couch had been on the east wall and the blinds were open, then it would have been quite easy for someone coming around the garage to see whomever was sitting there on the couch.

Edited by Chris Newton
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When I first read the Ruth Paine testimony to the WC, I was confused by the entire "line of questioning" concerning the front door and the sofa and "who could see what". The questions seemed centered around trivial matters that had no obvious purpose.

paine_west.jpg?dl=0

Compare the above account to these two below:

 

Det. Rose:

rose_paines_porch.jpg

 

Det. Walthers:

walthers_paine.jpg

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If the couch was on the East wall and the drapes were open Ruth would have seen the officers approaching the porch from the driveway and walkway and stepping up on it as she would have been looking South West at the TV front door closed or not.  As it stands we have two officers, one from the DPD, one from the County Sherriff's  Office saying Ruth met them at the open door and invited them in.  But Ruth says she answered the closed door when the bell rang.  Well, if she's lying about having Mikey and Ozzie move the couch she might be lying here too.  I forget her comments on what she said when she opened the door about inviting them in / "been expecting you".

Interesting that the questioning after answering the closed door changes to the lawn... 

Edited by Ron Bulman
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2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

If the couch was on the East wall and the drapes were open Ruth would have seen the officers approaching the porch from the driveway and walkway and stepping up on it as she would have been looking South West at the TV front door closed or not. 

 

[If the Alan Grant photo is accurate and was taken later on the same night -then the couch is on the east wall when this event occurs, not on the north wall. This testimony would be another instance of willful perjury if that photograph is accurate.]

 

Yes, and if the couch is on the east wall and the drapes were open, the lawmen could easily have seen anyone sitting there as soon as they came around the corner by the garage.

In fact I think that's exactly what Detective Rose describes:

Let's just step through his statement...

 

"We walked up to the house...

...and I could hear the TV was playing,

and I could see the door was standing open...

...and I could see two people inside sitting on the couch,

and just as soon as we walked up on the porch,

Ruth Paine came to the door."

 

Rose does not say he walked up onto the porch and then made observations, he says he made these observations and then walked up to the porch. The true location of the couch, now lends more credence to Detective Rose's recollections.

 

Note: it's clear in some images that there is an outer "half - screen" door and a traditional front door together at the front of the Paine home. Therefore it's difficult to determine exactly what is meant when the Detectives say the door was open and Ruth says it was closed. Are they both talking about the screen door or the main door?

Are they talking about different doors?

I don't know.

I could make a guess and say the screen door was closed and the front door was open and that's why Detective Rose could hear the TV. In that case they could both be technically correct.

 

 

Edited by Chris Newton
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Calling Tom Hume....

Hey Tom,

The FBI says "there's nothing to see here... move along". What say you?

 

highlight_dict.jpg

 

...assuming this is that item:

dictionaryM-W.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Chris Newton
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Sorry Chris, I've been working on what appears to me to be a breakthrough with the "Hidell" alias (the thread below). So I was busy and missed your last post. I'll take a look at those items when I get a chance, but it sure would be better to be dealing with the original docs, transcriptions often overlook important details - that's where the Devil often is.

Tom

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