Oswald Leaving TSBD?

[Sean Murphy]

The key witness here is Lee Oswald himself

who told Fritz he was on the 2nd floor getting a coke when the policeman came in.

Sorry, Ray, no matter how many times you tell us what Oswald told Fritz in custody, the stark fact remains: we don't know because we weren't there and the interrogations weren't recorded. We have to put the pieces of the puzzle together with great care.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Sean Murphy]

Which reminds me: Larry Ray worked alongside Jack Daugherty

and tried to get Daugherty to talk about the case

but Daugherty was too cunning and refused to answer questions.

I regret now that I did not record my conversations with Larry Ray

although I may have some on video,

but as I recall Larry Ray said Daugherty would just give him a knowing look

and point to his head, as if to indicate

"don't remember".

I wasn't paying much attention to Jack Daugherty at the time

and, unlike others I never considered him a suspect

because we know from Milteer that the assassination was

"A mastermind job with a lot of money involved"

and I figured that, if Jack was involved he could probably afford

to retire.

That's fascinating about Jack Dougherty, Ray. I know Duke Lane was pretty interested in this issue a while back.

Why oh why has no one asked Buell Wesley Frazier for a physical description of Dougherty?

[Sean Murphy]

If Prayer man is Oswald, then Altgens 6 shows that he would be unable to see the first or subsequent shots as he is hidden inside the North corner of the doorway. As he can't see what is going on, (even Lovelady in the middle of the doorway is leaning forward to see what is going on) he is not aware that the President has been shot and fatally injured, so, after Baker runs past him, he decides to go upstairs for a Coke. Baker and Truly have to get across the first floor try the elevators which aren't working and the run up the stairs, by which time Oswald has walked up the front stairs and reached the dining area. They had to travel across the first floor diagonal try the elevators, then run up the stairs. Os had to walk up the front stairs and across maybe two thirds of the floor diagonal. Time line seems quite plausible.

Just my 2 cents.

Anybody got a plan layout of the second floor?

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).

[Robert Prudhomme]

I'm a bit confused here, Sean, with Mr. Campbell's stories. Did he "race" back into the building following the shots or did he "run" towards the grassy knoll?

It may easily be both, Robert.

The key word in Biffle's DMN report is "toward": Campbell is said to have run toward the grassy knoll but not necessarily very far in that direction. We see lots of people do exactly that in the Couch film.

He may then have returned to where Jeraldean Reid was standing and together they may have hurried back into the building, spotting Oswald in the small storage room just off the first-floor front lobby.

From Campbell's 11/24 FBI interview:

He then observed the car bearing President KENNEDY to slow down, a near stop, and a motorcycle policeman rushed up. Immediately following this, he observed the car rush away from the scene. He then immediately rushed into his building without having seen anything unusual from any window of this building.

If I'm right about his and Jeraldean Reid's having spotted Oswald in the storage room, then Biffle's DMN report can be explained as a simple case of crossed wires. He picked up two reports--Oswald's having been spoken to by a revolver-toting police officer immediately after the assassination and Oswald's having been seen in a small storage room immediately after the assassination--and conflated them. The direct quote from Campbell in the NY Herald Tribune report allows us to separate out the two reports.

Hello Sean

I trust these FBI "interviews" about as far as I can throw my dog. There is simply too much WC testimony in which witnesses are in denial of what an FBI agent wrote in an "interview". As I said before, none of these interviews are written in the first person, and none are signed by the interviewee. It is as if the FBI never contemplated the possibility of any witnesses ever having to testify about what they saw, and the only way that could happen would be if the one and only suspect was eliminated. Could they have known Oswald was not to live through the weekend? The formation of the WC was likely a great surprise to the FBI.

We can speculate abut how far Campbell ran towards the Grassy Knoll; whether it was a few feet or a few hundred feet, but the fact remains he did tell the reporter from the DMN that he ran toward the Grassy Knoll at the same time Baker and Truly were rushing into the TSBD. I maintain, considering the speed Baker went into the TSBD and the likelihood that he went up the stairs at the same speed, that Mrs. Reid could not have been on the 2nd floor to see Oswald with his Coke UNLESS Oswald, following his alleged 2nd floor encounter with Baker, was frozen into indecision and hid out on the 2nd floor long enough for Campbell and Mrs. Reid to return from the Grassy Knoll, and only then proceeded past Mrs. Reid on his way to the 1st floor.

Your version of the storage room sighting of Oswald on the 1st floor is much more likely, yet even this stretches the imagination, considering that JFK was shot at 12:30 and Oswald reputedly left the TSBD at 12:33.

I also find it rather incredulous that Baker would have run up one flight of stairs, to a very obvious landing on the 2nd floor, and believed himself to have been on the 3rd or 4th floor. There seems to have been a remarkable degree of "confusion" amongst Dealey Plaza witnesses that day.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Robert Prudhomme

[J. Raymond Carroll]

This may account for Baker's first glimpse of Oswald off the second-floor landing, but only at the cost of casting Oswald as a sociopathically dissociated man.

Sean: RIchard Hocking covered this yesterday

You could also add Otis Williams to that group since he was on the steps near Prayer Man, and also turns up in the group Geneva Hines describes. A large group apparently in a hurry to get to the same destination.

What an amazing gathering of sociopathically dissociated people.

You should have listened when I cautioned you about this dime-store psychology!

Edited August 24, 2013 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Sean Murphy]

Hello Sean

I trust these FBI "interviews" about as far as I can throw my dog. There is simply too much WC testimony in which witnesses are in denial of what an FBI agent wrote in an "interview". As I said before, none of these interviews are written in the first person, and none are signed by the interviewee. It is as if the FBI never contemplated the possibility of any witnesses ever having to testify about what they saw, and the only way that could happen would be if the one and only suspect was eliminated. Could they have known Oswald was not to live through the weekend? The formation of the WC was likely a great surprise to the FBI.

We can speculate abut how far Campbell ran towards the Grassy Knoll; whether it was a few feet or a few hundred feet, but the fact remains he did tell the reporter from the DMN that he ran toward the Grassy Knoll at the same time Baker and Truly were rushing into the TSBD. I maintain, considering the speed Baker went into the TSBD and the likelihood that he went up the stairs at the same speed, that Mrs. Reid could not have been on the 2nd floor to see Oswald with his Coke UNLESS Oswald, following his alleged 2nd floor encounter with Baker, was frozen into indecision and hid out on the 2nd floor long enough for Campbell and Mrs. Reid to return from the Grassy Knoll, and only then proceeded past Mrs. Reid on his way to the 1st floor.

Your version of the storage room sighting of Oswald on the 1st floor is much more likely, yet even this stretches the imagination, considering that JFK was shot at 12:30 and Oswald reputedly left the TSBD at 12:33.

I also find it rather incredulous that Baker would have run up one flight of stairs, to a very obvious landing on the 2nd floor, and believed himself to have been on the 3rd or 4th floor. There seems to have been a remarkable degree of "confusion" amongst Dealey Plaza witnesses that day.

Robert,

We do have the following statement in Campbell's own words, as given to James Leavelle on 17 Feb '64:

This bears out the notion that Campbell, having briefly checked out the scene outside, reentered the building not long after the shots.

Obviously he's not about to go repeating here the incendiary detail about Oswald in the small storage room.

But note the impression this statement gives--contrary to what Geneva Hine will tell us in her WC testimony--that he stayed on the first floor until Truly had come down again with the officer.

**

I imagine Campbell & Reid reentered the building within two or three minutes of the shooting.

What might have made Oswald nip into the storage room?

It could have been something as simple as needing somewhere to dispose of his empty coke bottle before exiting the building.

**

I quite agree with you about the unlikelihood of a trained officer confusing one floor up from the ground floor with several floors up the building. If Baker's affidavit had said "second or third floor" then maybe one might give him a pass. But third or fourth? I'm not buying. Still less as there is nothing else in his affidavit description to make this sound at all like the location of the alleged second-floor incident.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Sean Murphy]

This may account for Baker's first glimpse of Oswald off the second-floor landing, but only at the cost of casting Oswald as a sociopathically dissociated man.

Sean: RIchard Hocking covered this yesterday

You could also add Otis Williams to that group since he was on the steps near Prayer Man, and also turns up in the group Geneva Hines describes. A large group apparently in a hurry to get to the same destination.

What an amazing gathering of sociopathically dissociated people.

You should have listened when I cautioned you about this dime-store psychology!

Ray, I fear you've missed Richard's point entirely...

And no cigar on the gathering of sociopathically dissociated people. None of them hurried upstairs to buy a coke in response to the shooting outside. Yet that's what you would have us believe was the urgent priority of the JFK-admirer Lee Oswald.

[William Kelly]

This may account for Baker's first glimpse of Oswald off the second-floor landing, but only at the cost of casting Oswald as a sociopathically dissociated man.

Sean: RIchard Hocking covered this yesterday

You could also add Otis Williams to that group since he was on the steps near Prayer Man, and also turns up in the group Geneva Hines describes. A large group apparently in a hurry to get to the same destination.

What an amazing gathering of sociopathically dissociated people.

You should have listened when I cautioned you about this dime-store psychology!

Ray, I fear you've missed Richard's point entirely...

And no cigar on the gathering of sociopathically dissociated people. None of them hurried upstairs to buy a coke in response to the shooting outside. Yet that's what you would have us believe was the urgent priority of the JFK-admirer Lee Oswald.

No, Sean, it's not what Ray or I would have you believe, - it's not what we say - its the official story - what they said happen, and you don't have to believe it - and I'm not trying to convince you it happened, you can believe what you want to.

From the Warren Report's scenario - and if Baker saw Oswald through the second floor lunchroom door window - Oswald didn't come down the steps from the sixth floor, but arrived there from some other direction, which is what we are trying to figure out, and now have a pretty good idea of how Oswald got there.

As for Oswald buying a coke, it seems like he did that once every day just after lunch, with change he got from Mrs. Hine, why should he change that pattern just because somebody killed the President outside the front door?

The description of Oswald - his demeanor - by Baker, Truly and Reid - as being very cool and calm, quiet and stoic, not in a hurry, not out of breath, is not the demeanor of a man who has just blew somebody's head open and ran down four flights of steps in the process of escaping the scene of a crime.

According to Campbell, he waited for Truly to return from his trip upstairs with Baker, but when he gets back, tells Campbell that an employee is missing? Oswald? He just saw Oswald in the second floor lunchroom.

Truly doesn't come to realize Oswald is missing then, and Oswald wasn't the only employee missing, as many of those who wrote out reports later on said they either didn't return to TSBD, weren't permitted to get back in, or left within an hour or so thereafter. It is only after Truly's suspicious interaction with Chief Lumpkin when Lumpkin convinces Truly to tell Capt. Fritz about the "missing man" - Oswald - and Lumpkin escorts Truly to the Sixth Floor and gets Fritz's attention when Oswald becomes a suspect.

[Robert Prudhomme]

I'll let Geneva Hine tell us what happened next:

Mr. BALL. When you came back in did you see Mrs. Reid?

Miss HINE. No, sir; I don't believe there was a soul in the office when I came back in right then.

Mr. BALL. Did you see anybody else go in through there?

Miss HINE. No, sir; after I answered the telephone then there was about four or five people that came in.

...

Mr. BALL. Do you have any definite recollection of Mrs. Reid coming in?

Miss HINE. No, sir; I only saw four or five people that came by and they all came and were all talking about how terrible it was.

Mr. BALL. Do you remember their names?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Who were they?

Miss HINE. Mr. Williams, Mr. Molina (spelling), Miss Martha Reid, Mrs. Reid, Mrs. Sarah Stanton, and Mr. Campbell; that's all I recall, sir.

THis statement appears to be self-contradicting.

She didn't see Mrs. Reid come in, she only saw four or five people

one of whom was MRs. Reid.

I don't see much mileage in that.

And I would not put much faith in press reports where it is not clear which floor they are talking about.

It is a shame that WC lawyers, such as Mr. Ball, did not attempt to establish a time frame when questioning witnesses.

"Miss HINE. No, sir; after I answered the telephone then there was about four or five people that came in."

Was this three minutes after the assassination or thirty minutes? I'm sure Mrs. Reid made her way upstairs eventually that day, but this testimony is no help at all to us, considering the split second timing involved here between the actions of Baker, Truly, Oswald and Mrs. Reid.

[Sean Murphy]

No, Sean, it's not what Ray or I would have you believe, - it's not what we say - its the official story - what they said happen, and you don't have to believe it - and I'm not trying to convince you it happened, you can believe what you want to.

From the Warren Report's scenario - and if Baker saw Oswald through the second floor lunchroom door window - Oswald didn't come down the steps from the sixth floor, but arrived there from some other direction, which is what we are trying to figure out, and now have a pretty good idea of how Oswald got there.

As for Oswald buying a coke, it seems like he did that once every day just after lunch, with change he got from Mrs. Hine, why should he change that pattern just because somebody killed the President outside the front door?

The description of Oswald - his demeanor - by Baker, Truly and Reid - as being very cool and calm, quiet and stoic, not in a hurry, not out of breath, is not the demeanor of a man who has just blew somebody's head open and ran down four flights of steps in the process of escaping the scene of a crime.

According to Campbell, he waited for Truly to return from his trip upstairs with Baker, but when he gets back, tells Campbell that an employee is missing? Oswald? He just saw Oswald in the second floor lunchroom.

Truly doesn't come to realize Oswald is missing then, and Oswald wasn't the only employee missing, as many of those who wrote out reports later on said they either didn't return to TSBD, weren't permitted to get back in, or left within an hour or so thereafter. It is only after Truly's suspicious interaction with Chief Lumpkin when Lumpkin convinces Truly to tell Capt. Fritz about the "missing man" - Oswald - and Lumpkin escorts Truly to the Sixth Floor and gets Fritz's attention when Oswald becomes a suspect.

Bill, I've already made it clear that I do not dismiss out of hand the Groden/Hine scenario: Oswald is getting change for the coke machine, fails to realise the significance of the loud bangs he and Hine hear and goes ahead to buy his coke. Makes sense. Like you, I await the full details in Groden's book.

What I do dismiss out of hand is any scenario premised on the idea that Oswald, having either witnessed or become aware of something dramatic that has happened out on the street, would immediately focus on his need to go upstairs for a coke. It's a non-starter IMO.

It really boils down to two simple questions:

Did Oswald tell Fritz he was on the first floor at the time of the shooting?

If so, how did he know?

**

You speak of the "suspicious interaction" between Truly and Lumpkin. In what sense do you see it as suspicious?

[Sean Murphy]

It is a shame that WC lawyers, such as Mr. Ball, did not attempt to establish a time frame when questioning witnesses.

"Miss HINE. No, sir; after I answered the telephone then there was about four or five people that came in."

Was this three minutes after the assassination or thirty minutes? I'm sure Mrs. Reid made her way upstairs eventually that day, but this testimony is no help at all to us, considering the split second timing involved here between the actions of Baker, Truly, Oswald and Mrs. Reid.

Hine was desperate to find out what had happened outside. She would surely have noticed the presence of Jeraldean Reid if the latter had come into the office a couple of minutes after the shooting on her own. And Reid would have noticed her.

[Larry Hancock]

I'm really enjoying this thread and I have been skeptical in regard to many elements of the Baker encounter for a number of years. Even trivial things like whether or not a civilian like

Truly is going to sprint up several sets of stairs (each floor had a shorter double set) ahead of a police officer who has his pistol drawn. Cambell's statement has always gotten my attention

since it showed up immediately in news reports.

I think we also have a good deal of instances where witness testimony tends to "converge" around the official story after the first day or so, you can see that in comparing

first day statements with latter testimony. But in addition to that, I would like to repeat the cautions about memory and witness reliablity from a post I put up on my blog some

time ago. Its caution about using anything other than essentially first day or so memories is something we need to take very seriously. The blog entry follows:

I've been doing some reading recently on the reliability of witness testimony, an issue that has fragmented our research for decades. For reference on the subject, I would heartily

recommend Sherry Fiester's new book Enemy of the Truth - which contains a detailed professional analysis of just what you can and cannot expect from ear and eye witnesses.

Sherry draws on her career in criminology and forensics for this and we really need to pay attention to her.

But beyond what we can expect from first hand witnesses, the other major issue is the time factor. In one classroom study, the instructor staged an impromptu incident and

asked his class to record what they had seen happen over the course of a minute or so. The incident actually involved someone running in and firing a gun at the

instructor, with blanks. The students immediately recorded their impressions and the results were actually quite good in terms of accuracy and similarity of observations.

However, when asked to write down their observations within only a week of time passing, all sorts of changes began to show up - number of shots fired, dialog heard, and

the clothing of the instructor and assailant. Not only did the individual descriptions start to change significantly but there was no longer general agreement among the witnesses.

In 1986 a psychology instructor performed a similar experiment following the Challenger disaster, a test of what is referred to as "flashbulb" memory. He then filed their responses

for three years and repeated the same questions with the students. In comparing the two sets of responses, a quarter of the class did not have a single memory a year later that

matched their initial response. In some instances students became quite irate, admitting that there was an issue but aggressively defending their current memory over their original

statements.

Clearly this must be a caution for all historical research. While many of us have long stressed first day evidence, we should probably be more candid about first day memories.

We have a host of interviews with witness beginning days, weeks, months and years later. The real question is if they were not on record as of Nov 22 or possibly Nov 23, can

we really rely on them, especially without some sort of independent corroboration?

-- Larry

PS...the Challenger study was done at Emory University by Professor Ulric Neisser

[Thomas Graves]

[...]

[...]

Did Oswald tell Fritz he was on the first floor at the time of the shooting?

If so, how did he know?

[...]

Sean,

How did who know what?

Thanks,

--Tommy

Edited August 25, 2013 by Thomas Graves

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Ray, I fear you've missed Richard's point entirely...

And no cigar on the gathering of sociopathically dissociated people. None of them hurried upstairs to buy a coke in response to the shooting outside. Yet that's what you would have us believe was the urgent priority of the JFK-admirer Lee Oswald.

I have my own supply of Jameson's Sean

but I would like to get my hands on

the stuff you are smoking!

It must be powerful stuff!

To borrow from my learned friend

Mr.Vincent Bugliosi

There is not a shred,

not a scintilla of evidence

to support your position

on Lunch Room Man.

Who, in my book, thanks to your good self

is now known as Prayer Man.

Edited August 24, 2013 by J. Raymond Carroll

[William Kelly]

[...]

[...]

Did Oswald tell Fritz he was on the first floor at the time of the shooting?

If so, how did he know?

[...]

Sean,

How did who know what?

Thanks,

--Tommy

Thanks for your insights Larry, especially on the reliability of witness testimony and Sherry's work, that I too endorse.

Tommy, I don't know who Sean was referring to but if he meant how did Fritz know Oswald was on First Floor at time of assassination - it was because Oswald told Fritz that and Fritz recorded it for posterity in his notes and subsequent report.

Fritz Notes of Oswald Interrogations

Dallas City Files JFK Box 1 - Last item.

jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box1.htm

Very last item at the bottom of the page:

Box 1 Folder 15

1. Interrogation, by unknown author (DPD Homicide Captain Will Fritz). Typed rough draft with handwritten corrections pertaining to the interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald, (Original)

BK: NOTE that Fritz begins his investigation with the assumption that Oswald had done the shooting.

INTERROGATION OF – LEE OSWALD

We conducted the investigation at the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963, immediately after the President was shot and after we found the location where Lee Harvey Oswald had done the shooting from and left three empty cartridgex cases on the floor and the rifle had been found partially hidden underxxxxx some boxes near the back of of the stairway.....

Page 2

….I asked him what/part of the building he was in at the time the President was shot, and he said that he was having lunch about that time on the first floor. Mr. Truly had told me that one of the officers had stopped this man immediately after the shooting somewhere near the back stairway, so I asked Oswald where he was when the officer stopped him. He said he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in. I asked him why he left the building, and he said that there was so much excitement he didn't think that there would be any more work that day, and that as this company wasn't particular about their hours, xxx that they did not punch a clock, that he thought it would be just as well that he left for the rest of the afternoon.....

JFKCountercoup2: 2nd Floor TSBD Diagram

Edited August 24, 2013 by William Kelly