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Oswald Leaving TSBD?


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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.

As your co-conspirator Gary Mack pointed out to me on the Paul Bentley thread,

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=13175

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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.

….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.....

Apologies Bill (and Tommy), I should have phrased my question a bit more clearly.

I was asking how Oswald knew that he himself had been on the first floor at the time of the shooting.

But no matter, the text you've highlighted in bold brings us quite nicely to the same question.

According to Fritz, Oswald said:

a ) that he was having lunch on the first floor about the time the President was shot

b ) that he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in.

Bill, do you believe Oswald really made both those claims in custody?

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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.

Very interesting reflections, Larry, thanks.

You are of course quite correct to insist on the deep value of first-day evidence.

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You are of course quite correct to insist on the deep value of first-day evidence.

And second-day evidence is equally valuable

as we see from the affidavit of Jeraldean Reid,

kindly and timely provided by my most learned friend,

Mr.Pat Speer from the great state of California.

In the fifty years since JFK was murdered,

I hereby respectfully submit,

not one single solitary individual

has ever contradicted

Mrs. Jeraldean Reid.

Edited by J. Raymond Carroll
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prayermandesh12fps100c4k1m.gif

If Oswald is indeed Prayer Man, and if things went down as I have been suggesting in this thread, then the injustice infllcted upon him by the 'investigating' authorities, with collusion from his bosses, was even more monstrous than we had imagined.

**

The first on-the-record reference to a second-floor lunchroom incident (as opposed to an uneventful pre-assassination visit up to the lunchroom to buy a coke by Oswald) does not come until the evening or night of November 22nd, when Roy Truly is interviewed by the F.B.I.

The interview takes place at some point after – and as a result of - Oswald’s first interrogation, which concluded around 4:15 p.m.

We know this because Truly is asked in this interview to answer a disturbing allegation which Oswald has made:

Mr. TRULY advised that it is possible OSWALD did see him with a rifle in his hands within the past few days, as a Mr. WARREN CASTER, employed by Southwesterrn Publishing Co., which company has an office in the same building, had come to his office with two rifles, one a .22 rifle which CASTER said he had purchased for his son and the other a larger more high powered rifle which CASTER said he had purchased with which to go deer hunting, if he got a chance. Mr. TRULY examined the high powered rifle and raised it to his shoulder and sited [sic.] over it, then returned it to CASTER, and CASTER left with both rifles.

Mr. TRULY stated he does not own a rifle and has had no other rifle in his hands or in his possession in a long period of time.

Truly’s explanation was investigated and found to check out. But the rifle incident was not the only occasion for his name to come up in Oswald’s interrogation. Oswald had also evidently mentioned an incident involving Truly and a police officer.

Here is Truly’s response to that claim:

[…] He […] noticed a Dallas City Police officer wearing a motorcycle helmet and boots running toward the entrance of the depository building and he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone. This snack bar has no windows or doors, facing the outside of the building, but is located almost in the center of the building. The officer pointed to OSWALD and asked if OSWALD was an employee of the company and he, TRULY, assured the officer that OSWALD was an employee. He and the officer then proceeded onto the roof of the building [...]

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the above text constitutes the very earliest reference anywhere to a second-floor lunchroom incident.

As we have already seen, it contains five words which, however seemingly innocuous, may well be of explosive significance:

…he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building…

“They saw no one there”… The fact that Truly is even pointing out this gratuitous fact can only indicate one thing: that he has been confronted with Oswald’s claim that it was precisely “there”, inside the front of the building on the first floor, that the officer and Truly met him. Truly’s disclaimer draws ironic attention to what it is disclaiming.

Whether Truly fed the F.B.I. the second-floor lunchroom version of events, or whether it was the F.B.I. who helped him get it straight, the upshot is the same: the lunchroom story appears to be a fabrication, a fiction designed for the sole purpose of eliminating Oswald’s all too real alibi for the President’s murder.

**

But what of Marrion Baker? He has gone on the record about having challenged a man walking away from the rear stairway several floors up the building. Like Ochus Campbell, with his loose words to the press about Oswald's being seen in a small storage room on the first floor, Baker goes awful quiet awful fast after this.

Between the time of his 11/22 affidavit and his participation in the Warren Commission’s ‘reconstruction’ in March ’64 of his and Truly’s movements in the Depository, we hear astonishingly little from this crucial participant in the fateful day’s events. All we have are two extremely brief F.B.I. reports.

**

The first, dated November 26th 1963, is of almost nil evidentiary value:

Bakerfbifeb26_zps1b8dd5f5.jpg

These are Detective, not Patrolman, Baker’s reported words. They do not, therefore, represent anything Marrion Baker might have told the F.B.I. himself.

The second document is more interesting:

Bakerfbifeb29_zps37030b77.jpg

This appears on first glance to confirm Truly’s story. In fact, however, it falls far short of a clear endorsement.

For one thing, why is Baker still saying absolutely zilch about the fact that he first spotted Oswald walking on the far side of a closed door?

And why not a word that he himself went through this door to find Oswald in a room located near the middle of the building?

Add to this complete lack of concrete context the fact that Baker gives the distinct impression that he and Truly only took to the stairs after having encountered Oswald – à la first-floor encounter.

The incident is, it is true, placed explicitly on the “second floor” (as opposed to the “third or fourth floor” of Baker’s 11/22 affidavit statement). But there is not a single topographical reference here that might reassure us that this really is the second floor Baker is talking about.

Indeed, assuming that the F.B.I. didn’t simply change Baker’s “first” to “second” when they wrote up this report (a very real possibility, alas), there is a very elementary way they could have got him to put a first-floor incident on the “second floor”: by telling him that the first floor of the Depository was in reality known as the ‘second’ due to the fact that one had to go up a flight of steps at the front entrance to get onto it. Factor in such a minor sleight-of-hand on the part of the F.B.I., and everything in the above statement bolsters the notion of a first-floor front entrance encounter.

**

In any case, there is not a single instance between the assassination and Baker’s dealings with the Warren Commission in March ‘64 of his actually describing in recognisable form the second-floor incident which Roy Truly was happily narrating to anyone who asked. No door, no room, no machine, nothing.

Apart from anything else, this suggests that it took quite some time to bring the perplexed Baker properly ‘on script’.

Edited by Sean Murphy
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If Oswald is indeed Prayer Man, and if things went down as I have been suggesting in this thread, then the injustice infllicted upon him by the 'investigating' authorities,

with collusion from his bosses,

as even more monstrous that we had imagined.

I see no evidence for

collusion from his bosses.

Both Shelley and Truly testified

that Lee worked an honest day's work

that particular day, as he always did

since he took the job.

We can tell from the testimony of Truly and Shelley

that they were most impressed by Lee

who was a dedicated worker,

at home in the world of books.

It is doubtful if they could say the same

about any of his workmates.

Lee Oswald , according to his supervisors,

was a good guy to have on board.

And as my daughters Olivia and Marlo keep reminding me:

If Lee Oswald is such a mean guy

why is he always seen smiling

in his films/photographs?

https://www.google.com/search?site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=632&q=lee+oswald&oq=lee+oswald&gs_l=img.12..0l10.4305.8707.0.11762.10.6.0.4.4.0.84.432.6.6.0....0...1ac.1.25.img..0.10.497.hATMuLknyNU#fp=13d6aa3a7d487f41&q=lee+marina+oswald&tbm=isch

_2842002202.jpg

1962 --- Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, and their daughter June Lee. This photo was taken the year Oswald would return from Minsk to the United States with his Russian wife and their young daughter. --- Image by © CORBIS
Edited by J. Raymond Carroll
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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.

….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.....

Apologies Bill (and Tommy), I should have phrased my question a bit more clearly.

I was asking how Oswald knew that he himself had been on the first floor at the time of the shooting.

But no matter, the text you've highlighted in bold brings us quite nicely to the same question.

According to Fritz, Oswald said:

a ) that he was having lunch on the first floor about the time the President was shot

b ) that he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in.

Bill, do you believe Oswald really made both those claims in custody?

Yes, and I don't believe the second floor lunchroom confrontation was a fabrication, I believe that Marion Baker was a Wrong Copper, - in mob speak - which means that he was the wrong cop to try to bribe or get to go along with an illegal or immoral act.

I can't say the same about Roy Truly because he is the one who first exonerated and then fingered Oswald, egged on by Chief Lumpkin, and I can't say the same for Shelley.

Why would those covering up the conspiracy to assassinate the president concoct a false second floor lunchroom incident that exonerates Oswald?

And Sean, I'm still open to persuasion, and thanks for calling attention to "Prayer Man," and I hope we can focus in on the figure further to determine for sure who it is - and if it is Oswald - is it the same man - "College Boy" in the third, yet unidentified film of the TSBD doorway in the immediate aftermath of the assassination.

BK

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According to Fritz, Oswald said:

a ) that he was having lunch on the first floor about the time the President was shot

b ) that he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in.

Bill, do you believe Oswald really made both those claims in custody?

Yes, and I don't believe the second floor lunchroom confrontation was a fabrication, I believe that Marion Baker was a Wrong Copper, - in mob speak - which means that he was the wrong cop to try to bribe or get to go along with an illegal or immoral act.

I can't say the same about Roy Truly because he is the one who first exonerated and then fingered Oswald, egged on by Chief Lumpkin, and I can't say the same for Shelley.

Why would those covering up the conspiracy to assassinate the president concoct a false second floor lunchroom incident that exonerates Oswald?

And Sean, I'm still open to persuasion, and thanks for calling attention to "Prayer Man," and I hope we can focus in on the figure further to determine for sure who it is - and if it is Oswald - is it the same man - "College Boy" in the third, yet unidentified film of the TSBD doorway in the immediate aftermath of the assassination.

BK

Well, Bill, thank you for starting this thread and kicking the whole discussion off in the first place. And I look forward to further constructive study here of the Prayer Man figure and related images.

Regarding Fritz's account of what Oswald said in custody, we have two problems.

1) If we believe that Oswald really said he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in, then we must conclude either that he was lying or that the second-floor lunchroom incident as described by Baker never happened.

2) If Oswald really did claim to have been on the first floor at the time of the shooting, then the Groden/Hine change-for-coke-in-second-floor-office story is ruled out.

Edited by Sean Murphy
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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.

….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.....

Apologies Bill (and Tommy), I should have phrased my question a bit more clearly.

I was asking how Oswald knew that he himself had been on the first floor at the time of the shooting.

But no matter, the text you've highlighted in bold brings us quite nicely to the same question.

According to Fritz, Oswald said:

a ) that he was having lunch on the first floor about the time the President was shot

b ) that he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in.

Bill, do you believe Oswald really made both those claims in custody?

Sean,

Would this be a good way to put it?--

"How could Oswald have known that the shooting happened while he was on the first floor?"

Thanks,

--Tommy :sun

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Sean,

Would this be a good way to put it?--

"How could Oswald have known that the shooting happened while he was on the first floor?"

Thanks,

--Tommy :sun

Yes, Tommy, that's exactly how I should have phrased it the first time. Thanks.

Oswald's claim to have been on the first floor at the time of the assassination makes no sense if he first learned about the shooting when the officer burst into the lunchroom or when Jeraldean Reid informed him that someone had shot at the President. How could he have been so sure in retrospect that he had been on one, not two, at the time of the assassination?

If, on the other hand, Oswald was already aware that something had happened outside before he left the first floor, then his decision to go up to buy a coke within seconds of becoming aware of this looks very weird. Of all the times in his lunch period to make that ascent up a flight, he chooses this one. What incredible synchronicity!

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prayermandesh12fps100c4k1m.gif

If Oswald is indeed Prayer Man, and if things went down as I have been suggesting in this thread, then the injustice infllcted upon him by the 'investigating' authorities, with collusion from his bosses, was even more monstrous than we had imagined.

**

The first on-the-record reference to a second-floor lunchroom incident (as opposed to an uneventful pre-assassination visit up to the lunchroom to buy a coke by Oswald) does not come until the evening or night of November 22nd, when Roy Truly is interviewed by the F.B.I.

The interview takes place at some point after – and as a result of - Oswald’s first interrogation, which concluded around 4:15 p.m.

We know this because Truly is asked in this interview to answer a disturbing allegation which Oswald has made:

Mr. TRULY advised that it is possible OSWALD did see him with a rifle in his hands within the past few days, as a Mr. WARREN CASTER, employed by Southwesterrn Publishing Co., which company has an office in the same building, had come to his office with two rifles, one a .22 rifle which CASTER said he had purchased for his son and the other a larger more high powered rifle which CASTER said he had purchased with which to go deer hunting, if he got a chance. Mr. TRULY examined the high powered rifle and raised it to his shoulder and sited [sic.] over it, then returned it to CASTER, and CASTER left with both rifles.

Mr. TRULY stated he does not own a rifle and has had no other rifle in his hands or in his possession in a long period of time.

Truly’s explanation was investigated and found to check out. But the rifle incident was not the only occasion for his name to come up in Oswald’s interrogation. Oswald had also evidently mentioned an incident involving Truly and a police officer.

Here is Truly’s response to that claim:

[…] He […] noticed a Dallas City Police officer wearing a motorcycle helmet and boots running toward the entrance of the depository building and he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone. This snack bar has no windows or doors, facing the outside of the building, but is located almost in the center of the building. The officer pointed to OSWALD and asked if OSWALD was an employee of the company and he, TRULY, assured the officer that OSWALD was an employee. He and the officer then proceeded onto the roof of the building [...]

As far as I have been able to ascertain, the above text constitutes the very earliest reference anywhere to a second-floor lunchroom incident.

As we have already seen, it contains five words which, however seemingly innocuous, may well be of explosive significance:

…he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building…

“They saw no one there”… The fact that Truly is even pointing out this gratuitous fact can only indicate one thing: that he has been confronted with Oswald’s claim that it was precisely “there”, inside the front of the building on the first floor, that the officer and Truly met him. Truly’s disclaimer draws ironic attention to what it is disclaiming.

Whether Truly fed the F.B.I. the second-floor lunchroom version of events, or whether it was the F.B.I. who helped him get it straight, the upshot is the same: the lunchroom story appears to be a fabrication, a fiction designed for the sole purpose of eliminating Oswald’s all too real alibi for the President’s murder.

Great work, Sean, for which many thanks. Keep going.

It's worth recalling that there were two powerful additional incentives for the FBI to embark upon hasty revisions - the objective of which was simply to banish Oswald from the doorway of the TSBD almost irrespective of the problems this initial change brought with it - during the late afternoon of November 22:

1) the Parkland doctors' press conference on Kennedy, which insisted upon a shot (or shots) from the front;

2) and Altgens 6 (specifically, the identity of doorway man).

The second consideration above does not require the reader to accept the identification of the patsy as doorway man; merely, rather, to have the honesty to acknowledge what is plainly true from the FBI's own internal documentation - the question was, at that juncture, unresolved, at least to the Bureau's satisfaction.

The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisations, many of them subsequently abandoned.

Paul

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If Oswald was on the 1st floor at the time of the assassination AND on the 2nd floor when Officer Baker stopped him with a Coke in his hand AND Oswald obtained change for the Coke machine on a daily basis from Miss Hine (or Mrs. Reid? no one seems to clarify exactly who he got change from), this leaves us with a couple of questions to contemplate.

1. Where did he get change from on that day to buy a Coke, if he regularly received change from Mrs. Reid?

2. If he had to stop to get change from Miss Hine, before purchasing his Coke, would that not make him late for his appointment with Officer Baker, considering the split second timing we are dealing with here? Remember, the WC themselves only gave Oswald 90 seconds from the time of the last shot to be on the 2nd floor and seen by Baker.

Edited by Robert Prudhomme
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A diagram of the second floor:

http://mffprodos5.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=139038

Diagrams for the entire building, complete with pictures:

http://mffprodos5.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10896&relPageId=1

Edited by Pat Speer
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[...]

[...]

Here is a direct link to a thread containing static images and moving Gifs ot the man and the area in question.

It's a long thread with many interesting diversions and fantastic graphical analysis by some of the most talented and dedicated photo analysis people in the JFK community.

Here is one example of the standard of stabilized Gif construction which is a major feature at my forum.

This one shows clearly the man in question, and Baker running towards the entrance.

Credit Gerda Dunckel

prayermandesh12fps100c4k1m.gif

Enjoy the thread - Link Below

http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,6724.0.html

Has anyone noticed the person who slowly stands up or goes up one step, backwards, in front of Prayer Man?

Also, notice the suit-wearing man at the base of the steps on the left who waves Baker up the steps with his left hand and pivots out of the way. Could that be Roy Truly?

--Tommy :sun

PS: Unrelated comment. It seems that the main "purpose" of this thread is to prove that "Prayer Man" was Oswald and, therefore, that Oswald couldn't possibly have been a shooter. If we can do that, would it prove that Oswald wasn't wittingly involved in the conspiracy? (I'm not saying that he was.)

Edited by Thomas Graves
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"As your co-conspirator Gary Mack pointed out to me on the Paul Bentley thread,


absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."



Raymond, that reminds me of another great American's statement: :"That depends on what your definition of 'is' is"! Bill Clinton...........lol


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