Where's Ruth's couch?

[Chris Newton]

4 hours ago, Tom Hume said:

I've been working on what appears to me to be a breakthrough with the "Hidell" alias

No problem Tom. I'm bust too so understood. No rush, it might not be anything at all.

I don't know what the fate of the dictionary is or even if there are samples of the pages in question. There were few, (if any), publications in evidence that have pages reproduced that were also deemed, (by the WC), to be of doubtful importance. I'll see if I can find anything.

[Ron Bulman]

On 5/17/2017 at 11:40 AM, Chris Newton said:

Tom,

I'm glad we came to the same conclusion for different reasons, that's why I posted the question.

My reasoning for the configuration is based on Ruth Paine's story about how she acquired the "Oswald rough draft of the Russian Embassy letter". In this story, after typing his letter on Ruth's typewriter in the kitchen, Lee mysteriously leaves his rough draft on top of the small desk secretary that is along the NORTH wall of the living room. The rough draft sits there, for almost 24 hours despite Lee spending most of his time in the living room watching TV.  Marina is unmentioned in Ruth's story about the rough draft but since the paper has Lee's writing on both sides we should assume that despite housework and TV and the kids she was uninterested in the letter in her husband's handwriting. On Sunday morning, Nov. 10, Ruth wakes up before the rest of the household and reads the note and decides to make a handwritten copy. Sunday evening, after watching football all day, Ruth asks Michael and Lee to help her move furniture in the living room. By her account, they swap the locations of the "little desk secretary"and the "living room couch". The couch was on the EAST wall before the swap and the "little desk secretary" was on the NORTH wall. The swapping of the furniture gives Ruth Paine the opportunity to "filch" Lee's rough draft and she closes the letter inside her "little desk secretary" before the men move it.

My contention is that this story is ridiculous. It is invented to either cover the fact that Ruth was taking things from Lee's belongings in the garage which she had unfettered access to five days a week, while Lee was at work.  AND/OR  That Ruth Paine was acting as an informant to the FBI/CIA and was involved in an operation involving this letter and it's drafts to "setup" Lee Harvey Oswald.

John Newman, Peter Dale Scott and many others believe that the Oswald Embassy Letter is a forgery, if this theory is correct then where does that put Ruth's story?

 

BTW... Alan Grants photos were taken on the morning of 11/23/63 before the FBI had questioned Ruth & Marina. They show the living room in a configuration that is impossible if Ruth's testimony/story is true.

Here's the post I was referring to in the current thread "Oswald's Last Letter".

[Joe Bauer]

Ruth finds the "rough draft" of the letter Oswald wrote.

She decides not only to read it but then takes the unusual action of making her own handwritten copy of this.

Even though RP already knew about Oswald's extreme political activity in New Orleans and his efforts at getting Marina back to Russia, it's still a bold privacy invading thing to do and you'd think her Christian principles might tell her this was wrong?

And if she was willing to invade Oswald's privacy to the point of copying his personal notes, it seems obvious that she would have also have taken a look at Oswald's other personal stuff in the garage when he wasn't around.

Watching Ruth Paine in the video "the Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald" ( on You Tube ) and hearing her testimony under questioning by Gerry Spence and Vincent Bugliosi you really get a feel for how much she personally hated Oswald and was jealously protective of Marina Oswald at the same time.

Her undermining Lee Oswald as much as she did makes total sense in this context. 

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Bulman]

On 6/5/2017 at 6:13 PM, Chris Newton said:

Ruth Paine has asserted in her testimony before the Warren Commission that...

Oswald's rough draft of the alleged Soviet Embassy letter was noticed by her on the "little desk secretary" in the living room sometime on Saturday Nov. 10th.

The letter remained there untouched until Sunday morning when Ruth Paine read the letter and then copied it.

Eventually, Sunday evening she asked her husband, Michael, and Lee Oswald to move the "little desk secretary" to the east wall and the living room couch to the north wall, swapping their locations in the living room.

Moments prior to the furniture re-arranging, Ruth Paine removed Oswald's alleged rough draft from the top of the "little desk secretary" and placed it inside the "little desk secretary", hiding it from view.

She then kept the rough draft allegedly written by LHO until 11/22/63 when she gave it to FBI Agent Hosty.

She then, in a followup interview by FBI Agent Odum, supplied that Agent with her handwritten copy.

 

My assertion is that the "little desk secretary" event is an invention designed to coverup the real story about the provenance of Oswald's alleged rough draft.

The photograph taken on 11/23/63 shows the couch and "little desk secretary" in an arrangement that is impossible on that date if Ruth Paine's story is true.

 

This is the essence of Chris's thread in relation to Oswald's Last Letter and rough draft of it.   Though I do digress regarding those seven small file cabinets taken from the Paine garage on 11/22/63.  The ones that disappeared from history.

[James DiEugenio]

CN:  BTW... Alan Grants photos were taken on the morning of 11/23/63 before the FBI had questioned Ruth & Marina. They show the living room in a configuration that is impossible if Ruth's testimony/story is true.

 

IMO, the above is the pay off to the whole affair.

Edited January 4, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

On 6/27/2017 at 12:12 AM, Chris Newton said:

 

[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.

 

 

Chris Newton and Ruth Paine being mentioned in the current Thornley thread made me think of this one.  Chris pretty much nailed her hide to the wall regarding the letter in it I thought.  But this particular post made me wonder about something.  What time did the police arrive at the Paine house on 11/22/63?  For some reason I thought it was say seven ish.   Not sure where to look for that quickly. 

If it was possibly that late I wonder about the front door being open.  Late November in North Texas after the sun goes down it's cooling off enough you usually would have the door closed.  Especially with small children in the house.  I know it had been a fairly nice day, don't know what the high was but I don't recall reading it was hot.  

I tend to believe officer Rose over Ruth on the door being open though.  If she greeted the police at the front door with it open and said "come on in we've been expecting you", then might she have still had the door open because she Was expecting them.  Which she likely was as Lee's name was in the news for a while by that point.

[James DiEugenio]

This is what I am waiting for from Chris.

Hopefully  he is putting this all together.    I think its really strong.

Edited July 8, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Pat Speer]

On 7/7/2020 at 5:36 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Chris Newton and Ruth Paine being mentioned in the current Thornley thread made me think of this one.  Chris pretty much nailed her hide to the wall regarding the letter in it I thought.  But this particular post made me wonder about something.  What time did the police arrive at the Paine house on 11/22/63?  For some reason I thought it was say seven ish.   Not sure where to look for that quickly. 

If it was possibly that late I wonder about the front door being open.  Late November in North Texas after the sun goes down it's cooling off enough you usually would have the door closed.  Especially with small children in the house.  I know it had been a fairly nice day, don't know what the high was but I don't recall reading it was hot.  

I tend to believe officer Rose over Ruth on the door being open though.  If she greeted the police at the front door with it open and said "come on in we've been expecting you", then might she have still had the door open because she Was expecting them.  Which she likely was as Lee's name was in the news for a while by that point.

 

The Dallas police came up to the Paine home around 2:30. They later created a phony report saying it was 3:30...but it was actually around 2:30.

And we know this for a whole bunch of reasons.

But the key one is this: Ruth Paine gave them Oswald's phone number and they used a reverse look-up to get Oswald's address. They then sent a car out to the rooming house. Well, this car got to the rooming house around 3, if I recall.

So how could they have got there before they were told the phone number through which they obtained the address?

Yeah, I know. Some prefer to think eegads this means they knew Oswald's address BEFORE they got out to the Paine's! But no, that's silly. All the evidence points to then coming out at 2:30 outside that unsigned and undated report.

Typo? I don't think so. They may have been trying to conceal that they knew Oswald had carried a bag that morning BEFORE the DPD in the building "discovered" a bag. I mean, they're told he carried a bag, and then PRESTO, Montgomery walks out to the building with a bag.

.

[Joe Bauer]

No post. My mistake. 

 

[Greg Doudna]

Chris Newton, you have established that Ruth Paine on March 23, 1964, testified under oath (technically, Friends' "affirmation" not oath but with the same legal force as oath) that her sofa was on the north wall of her living room on Nov 22. However the Alan Grant photo of Nov 22 shows the sofa on the east wall; your excellent analysis on that point is airtight. The suggestion is that Ruth Paine committed perjury, that she never moved her furniture on Nov 10 as she claimed, and that the motive for these multiple perjuries stemmed from an untrue invention of a claim of furniture moving on Nov 10 generated as part of her story of hiding the handwritten draft of Oswald's Russian Embassy letter. Here I propose a different interpretation of the same facts.

First, it can be established that Ruth Paine had a practice of moving that sofa between those two walls on other occasions. The evidence is that on the date of the WC testimony of March 23, 1964 held in her home, the sofa was at the north wall (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=43#relPageId=420&tab=page). But four months earlier the sofa was on the east wall (the photo of Nov 23). At some time between November and March the sofa had been moved from east wall to north wall.

The fact of this later move of the sofa removes the need to hypothesize an extraordinary explanation to account for the claim of Ruth Paine to have moved her sofa earlier in the exact same way, if one simple explanation can be discovered that accounts for all such sofa movings, not just one.

This raises the question: why would a woman in a house move a sofa from the east wall to the north wall, or vice versa?

I think the explanation that makes the best sense is related to avoiding sun in the eyes, at the times that television is being watched.

The television is set in the southwest of the room facing northeast. Its position does not change, and faces the sofa in either position of the sofa. There is a huge picture window in the southern wall. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, and for a picture window with southern exposure, setting in the west would be direct sun on people sitting in the sofa if it is at the east wall. 

Other testimony from the Paine household refers to watching television in the evening. If normal television watching time in the Paine house was say 6 pm or 7 pm or so, that would be an issue during some months but in winter months the sun sets earlier, and Daylight Savings Time in particular brings darkness before 6 pm. The reconstruction here would be that the east wall was the preferred position for the sofa so as not to have a "fishbowl" feeling of being so much on display through the open picture window. With the sofa on the east wall, one could curl up, snuggle, be more private and at ease. But this is only possible in the ca. 6-8 pm television viewing time when it is dark and the sun has already set, or after Daylight Savings Time in the fall.

Around Nov 1 in Daylight Savings Time clocks move back an hour and it gets dark before 6 p.m. The sofa could be set in its preferred spot on the east wall in comfort, which in fact is where it was on Nov 22 when sunset was early. But as winter ends the time of sunset gets later and starts to go into early evening again, with that setting Texas sun coming right in from the west through that southern-wall picture window onto the faces of those sitting on the sofa. Time to move the sofa to the north wall, which is in fact where the sofa is on March 23, 1964.

By accident, the incident of the Russian Embassy letter and the desk secretary, occurred on the day that Ruth Paine moved the sofa, Nov 10. The Russian Embassy letter did not cause the move of the sofa or its timing. The move of the sofa--the reason for the switching of the two items's locations--required the move of the desk secretary, so as to exchange places. The timing on Sunday Nov 10 was because two men were in the house, Michael and Lee, to help do this. It probably took maybe five minutes. 

A website I found that gives dates of Daylight Savings Times for Dallas in past years only goes back to 1970, but a check for 1970s Dallas shows dates between Oct 25-31, and Chicago in 1963 shows Oct. 27 (https://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/usa/dallas). That is close to Nov 10, the day Ruth had the men move the sofa back to the preferred position at the east wall, sun in the eyes in early evening no longer an issue.

An alert reader at this point will catch a slight discrepancy in detail--for this reconstruction is in the opposite direction that Ruth, speaking in March 1964, said the sofa had been moved on Nov. 10. And as you have established, Ruth had it backwards for Nov 22 from what the actual position of the sofa is in the Nov 22 photo. Ruth certainly got it backwards once (from the photo), and now I suggest it is clear that Ruth got it backwards twice, in her description of Nov 10 as well. 

The reconstructed movings of Ruth Paine's sofa--rendered explicable by consideration of sun through a southern-exposure picture window in early evening hours on persons sitting in a sofa situated at the east wall (I am experienced with sun issues and picture windows as a window cleaner)--run like this:

Before Nov 10. Sofa is at north wall. Ruth mistakenly says it is at the east wall.

<move of sofa Nov 10>

After Nov 10. Sofa is now at east wall (preferred; sun not an issue). Ruth mistakenly says it is at the north wall.

Nov. 22. Sofa is at east wall (confirmed by photo). Ruth mistakenly says it is at north wall.

<move of sofa ca. March>

March 23. Sofa is at north wall (confirmed by WC interviewers sitting in that sofa at Ruth's house that day).

All that needs to be assumed is that Ruth Paine got the north-east positionings of her sofa mistakenly reversed in her telling of the earlier times. Ruth Paine got that trivial detail wrong. Because it is an error on the level of a typo, not a wilful intent to deceive, it would not qualify as perjury to a reasonable jury. 

So now you have two very different explanatory narratives of the same set of facts--the one of everyone else on this thread, and this one. Which is the better explanation? This is how I interpret it. 

Edited 12/1/22 remove references to Daylight Savings Time. Dallas in 1963 did not practice Daylight Savings Time. 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Tony Krome]

3 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

 

After Nov 10. Sofa is now at east wall (preferred; sun not an issue). Ruth mistakenly says it is at the north wall.

Nov. 23. Sofa is at east wall (confirmed by photo). Ruth mistakenly says it is at north wall.

 

Mr. JENNER - Consequently, on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, when you were looking at television, you and Marina were facing out--facing toward Fifth Street? 
Mrs. PAINE - Yes. 

[Ron Bulman]

18 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

Mr. JENNER - Consequently, on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, when you were looking at television, you and Marina were facing out--facing toward Fifth Street? 
Mrs. PAINE - Yes. 

So, from the North wall, where the desk - secretary could not have been, if they were sitting on the couch along that wall? 

[James DiEugenio]

This is why I really hope Chris finishes that article for K and K.

[Tony Krome]

On 7/11/2020 at 12:53 PM, Ron Bulman said:

So, from the North wall, where the desk - secretary could not have been, if they were sitting on the couch along that wall? 

First of all, the photo that shows Ruth, Marina, Marguerite and Michael's legs in the living room, was not taken on the 23rd, it was taken on the night of the 22nd, after their return from Police Headquarters.

If the photo depicts the couch on the East wall, as some strongly suggest, I doubt it would have been moved in the few hours between the assassination and the arrival of the LIFE reporters that same evening.

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Tony Krome

[Chris Newton]

Alan Grant was invited into the house by Michael Paine. Curiously, Michael had time to return home from downtown and then go shopping before he encountered the Life reporters. The photograph of the sofa on the east wall of the living room that Alan Grant captured was taken the evening of 11/22/63.

https://allangrant.com/oswaldstory.htm