PRAYER PERSON - PRAYER MAN OR PRAYER WOMAN? RESEARCH THREAD

[Robert Prudhomme]

We

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.

We're not laughing with you, Dunc, we're laughing at you. Make no mistake about this.

PS

I'm not hurling insults here, James. I'm merely stating a fact.

Edited June 9, 2016 by Robert Prudhomme

[Guest]

It is not a personal insult.

Crying for help about something like that......

Edited June 9, 2016 by Bart Kamp

[Robert Prudhomme]

Robert Prudhomme

We're not laughing with you, Dunc, we're laughing at you. Make no mistake about this.

PS

I'm not hurling insults here, James. I'm merely stating a fact.

Personal Insult

My apologies if you find the truth somewhat difficult to handle.

[Guest]

Oh I am not worried in the slightest dear Duncan, I am merely rectifying you as always.

[Guest]

And note the throat and upper chest area in Darnell which is exposed.

_{Prayer Man.}

Edited July 19, 2016 by Bart Kamp

[Robert Prudhomme]

Rectifying....that almost sounds painful, Bart. Maybe because the word is too close to rectum??

[Gerry Simone]

Bart, I have an ardent supporter of the Prayer Man as Oswald on my FB (Alek Hiddell from the U.K.). To me, it seems like Oswald too. Lovelady is to our right of Prayer Man, maybe one step below (forgive my vague recollection now).

(No way that's a lady - anyone should be able to tell by his head, short hair, receding hairline, yadda yadda).

Edited August 9, 2016 by Gerry Simone

[Guest]

Lest anyone accuse me of being completely uninformed, I have recently reviewed at least 100 pages of the two main PM threads.

If a conspiracy were intended to frame LHO as at least one of the assassins – by carefully creating an extensive backstory pointing to him as a likely assassin, planting him in the TSBD well in advance of JFK's visit to Dallas and leaving a rifle traceable to him on the sixth floor – seemingly any sane group of conspirators would ensure that he was on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination – or at least not anyplace where he could easily be observed as not being on the sixth floor. Seemingly, this objective could easily have been achieved – far more easily than the massive effort required to create the backstory and plant the rifle traceable to him.

But no, the conspirators were so unconcerned that they allowed LHO to be standing on the front steps of the TSBD, where he might have been clearly photographed or definitively recalled by any number of people, including co-workers who knew him well. Indeed, if the conspirators allowed him to be outside the TBSD at all, he could just as easily have been standing in full view of Zapruder’s camera.

Fortunately, miraculously, for the conspirators, LHO was not clearly photographed or recalled by anyone. LHO was such a perfect patsy he didn’t even say (as far as we know), “Hey, I was standing right outside on the steps! Jeez, aren’t there photographs? Ask X, he [or she] was standing right beside me.”

Fortunately, miraculously, for the conspirators, all we have are a dim, grainy photo and dim, grainy videos in which PM cannot even be definitively identified as a man or a woman. Bingo, PM fans insist, this one unidentifiable character must, through a process of elimination, be LHO! The same LHO who immediately left the TSBD when everyone else stayed, went home and got his pistol, was in the immediate vicinity where an officer was mysteriously shot, disappeared into the dark recesses of the Texas Theater, and resisted the police when confronted - but, hey, we have explanations for those inconvenient facts as well.

Having carelessly allowed LHO to be outside on the TSBD steps during the assassination, the conspirators were forced to concoct the fictitious lunchroom encounter with Baker and Truly, including such seemingly troubling (for the conspiracy) details as the fact LHO was not out of breath and seemed to be unruffled by an officer pointing a gun at his chest. (The conspirators inserted these details, we are told, to explain why Baker didn’t arrest LHO or at least detain him.)

When I raised concerns such as these before, someone pointed out to me that the PM=LHO scenario, even if unlikely, was worth pursuing because, if PM could definitively be identified as LHO, the entire Lone Nut theory would collapse and LHO would be exonerated, at least as one of the assassins. Certainly this is true; however, if gnomes could definitively be proven to have caused the damage in my garden, my mundane gopher theory would collapse as well. I find it astounding that the “evidence” surrounding PM would have generated this much interest when the likelihood of PM being LHO is, for a host of reasons, at least as unlikely as gnomes causing the damage in my garden.

Before one pursues a theory, one at least has to consider the ramifications if the theory were true – i.e., does it make any sense whatsoever? The odds LHO appears in the dark shadows of the TSBD steps and nowhere else, with no clear image, no recollection by anyone, and no claim by LHO that this is where he was, seem infinitesimally small to start with. But the ramifications of PM=LHO are that (1) the conspirators were so supremely confident in their framing of LHO they didn’t even care that he was standing outside and might be clearly photographed or definitively identified by people who knew him well, and (2) the conspiracy was such a massively complex, constantly evolving one, involving so many different players, as to be entirely different from any other successful conspiracy in the history of the world.

The notion that PM=LHO strikes me as one of several “Paul is Dead” equivalents in JFK assassination research. It’s the sort of thinking one sees in all sorts of communities where the True Believers have lost their perspective and no longer really even care whether their theories make sense. The explanation I got before was essentially, "If we can show PM=LHO, it doesn't matter whether it makes sense!" True - if I can prove gnomes did the damage in my garden, whether gnomes exist does become a non-issue. But is this really how rational research proceeds? To become so enthralled with PM that one is willing to jettison the very damaging (to the Lone Nut theory) lunchroom encounter, which has every indicia of being an actual event (even if imperfectly recalled by the participants), strikes me as goofy.

Yesterday I happened to watch an episode of the successful British detective series "Vera." I realized the plot was unusually convoluted even for Vera, but I enjoyed the show. Only afterward, when I tried to connect the dots in my mind, did I realize, "That made no sense whatsoever." I have the same problem with PM=LHO. I defy anyone to posit an elaborate pre-assassination and post-assassination conspiracy that includes the element of LHO standing on the front steps of the TBSD at the time of the assassination.

[Sandy Larsen]

Okay Lance, I'll take your challenge.

Hypothesis

Some among the Joint Chiefs of Staff are fed up with dovish Kennedy, especially because of his secret negotiations with Russia and Cuba. They conspire with sympathetic figures in the CIA to stage a coup and eliminate Kennedy.

The CIA says they can do better than that. They can make it a false flag operation designed to gain public support for the U.S. government's anti-communist activities. (This is of secondary importance to their main goal of eliminating Kennedy and installing a cooperative Lyndon Johnson.)

It is decided that the easiest way of accomplishing their goal would be to take one of their own, which they have control over, and make him the patsy. They choose LHO, whose cover the CIA has already established as a pro-communist activist. They send him to Mexico City for Russian and Cuban visas, faked a meeting between him and a known Russian assassin, and sent a forged letter to the Russian Embassy where LHO talks as though he is their comrade. That takes some effort, but if it works it will pay off big time.

Some genius in the CIA decides that, with their limited budget, they'd do well to get the US government to do most of their work. All they needed to do is plant in the brains of some high officials that, should it be shown that there was a conspiracy between LHO and Russia (and/or Cuba), the end result could be nuclear war. Because Americans would demand justice for the killing of their beloved president.

This is where the plot to kill Kennedy ends and the U.S. government's plot to cover up any conspiracy begins. The CIA hopes for the best outcome -- that being that Russia is blamed -- but will settle for the change in regime. They have nothing to lose and much to gain.

Lance says that the plotters would have wanted Oswald NOT to be caught outside the sniper's nest. I think that is a debatable point. I think a point could be made that a wandering Oswald would serve the CIA's goals better. As long as they planted enough evidence to show that Oswald was involved. Because if Oswald was found to be involved but not to be the actual shooter, that would point directly to there being a conspiracy. Wouldn't that serve the CIA's plans even better than making Oswald the lone killer? A conspiracy involving a man who is sympathetic to Russia and Cuba, who writes the Russian Embassy as if he were one of them, and who had recently met with a KGB assassin? A man who, in fact, used to live in Russia?

On the other hand, the U.S. government would do everything in their considerable power to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the man they had caught (doubtless with the aid of the assassination plotters). Even if they had doubts about his guilt.

Do you see the beauty of the CIA's plan? In the process of making sure LHO was blamed for the assassination, on the U.S. government's dime, the heat would be taken off the real conspirators.

[Robert Prudhomme]

We think alike on this matter, Sandy.

I believe certain people dearly wanted a conspiracy to be "discovered"; why else risk a shot from the front that left a gaping exit wound in the back of JFK's head?

At the last minute, maybe cooler heads did prevail, and the thought of millions of Americans and Russians disappearing in a thermonuclear flash was just a bit too much to handle, and it was decided to place the blame on a "lone nut" who, up to that point, had only been one of several conspirators, and not even a shooter.

Why did Oswald not proclaim innocence, Lance? C'mon now, a smart fellow like you should have no trouble figuring this one out, or are you just pretending to have trouble with it?

Shortly after his arrest, I would imagine a message was put through to Oswald to just sit tight and keep his mouth shut, things would change at the last minute and he would be set free. Now, he might have thought about telling everything he knew about a conspiracy but, what good would that do?

1. No one would believe a commie, and the agencies would go into automatic denial.

2. This would guarantee his getting terminated early.

With nothing to lose, and everything to gain, he would have decided his best option was to sit still for the moment and see which way the wind blew. He might have already been told that people near him on the steps, such as Frazier, were about to develop amnesia and would be unable to provide him an alibi, or it might not have been discovered immediately that such a minor player in the assassination was even out on the steps. Look how many years it took us to find him.

Two days after the assassination, Oswald might have begun to suspect he really was the patsy and was going to be convicted for the assassination. He might even have been ready to tell everything he knew, and have privately expressed this intention within earshot of those behind the conspiracy, only to find himself shot to death in the basement of the DPD.

Sometimes, when you're in a bind with no options, the only thing you can do is sit tight, keep your mouth shut and hope the Cavalry shows up.

[Michael Cross]

And frankly, for all we know he spilled the beans at some point in custody. Without counsel present it was suppressed, and when they learned he would talk it forced them to kill him.

Pure conjecture, of course.

[Michael Walton]

Bob - Why did Oswald not proclaim innocence, Lance? C'mon now, a smart fellow like you should have no trouble figuring this one out, or are you just pretending to have trouble with it?

Bob, I'm pretty surprised you forgot about this after having made the above statement:

If someone claims - like Oswald says here - that he's a patsy and they're just taking him in because he lived over in Russia, that's a pretty strong statement of denial in my book.

Shortly after his arrest, I would imagine a message was put through to Oswald to just sit tight and keep his mouth shut, things would change at the last minute and he would be set free. Now, he might have thought about telling everything he knew about a conspiracy but, what good would that do?

Bob, I've always kind of thought your claims on this forum lean toward speculation, but the one above is wildly speculative. How do you know he he was told to be quiet? The notes from Fritz state he said he was out in front during the parade and when shown the back yard photos, was smart enough to know they were fakes. So he was acting far from being someone who whispered to him to be quiet.

This forum is to discuss theories but let's not get too carried away with fantasy and wild speculation; it only hurts the case for seeking the truth in the case.

[Robert Prudhomme]

He might have said he was a patsy but, did he say who was making him a patsy?

FYI, Michael.the majority of what is proposed on this forum is speculation, as the majority of the evidence presented has been altered or is an outright lie, such as the shallow back wound lie that you cling to so dearly.

[Thomas Graves]

[...]

[...]

[...]

Looking at these two perfectly- reasonably well-aligned frames (especially of the people on the steps) and with the help of the green lines and the photographic "enhancement" of Prayer Man, we can see that Lovelady is standing straight up and that Prayer Man is taking a picture with both hands (or drinking two-handedly from a shiny cup full of very hot coffee) in the first frame (the one without the cars), and that in the second frame a few seconds later (with the cars), Lovelady is leaning forward quite a bit, probably in response to having heard the shots and / or screams and wondering what the heck's going on with the President.of the United States down the street. Taking this into consideration helps to explain why Prayer Man lowered both of his hands (still clutching the camera or coffee cup) and raised his head at about the same time that Lovelady leaned forward -- because Prayer Man, too, had heard the shots and wanted to get a better view of what was "going down," down on Elm Street.

PS Who "enhanced" these frames so that PM's / PW's camera lens / coffee cup glows / shines so much more here than in the original film? I assume it was Chris Davidson, who is to complimented for doing so,and for creating this excellent GIF.

--Tommy

PPS Lovelady's leaning forward in the second frame (and supporting himself by holding onto the center hand railing?) helps to explain why Lovelady (aka "Doorman") looks so strangely angled in Altgens 6.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

He might have said he was a patsy but, did he say who was making him a patsy?

FYI, Michael.the majority of what is proposed on this forum is speculation, as the majority of the evidence presented has been altered or is an outright lie, such as the shallow back wound lie that you cling to so dearly.

Hi Bob!

[deleted]

-- Tommy

Edited August 29, 2016 by Thomas Graves