Lee Oswald’s Departure from the TSBD

[J. Raymond Carroll]

It may also tell us whether the walk to the Greyhound depot and subsequent ride to Beckley were timed correctly.

One person who would surely know the time of the first radio broadcast is Gary Mack.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

It may also tell us whether the walk to the Greyhound depot and subsequent ride to Beckley were timed correctly.

Thanks to an earlier post by Dennis Pointing, I discovered that the first broadcast about the assassination on radio station KLIF went out at 12.40.

I am away from home right now and not sure how this synchs with the Warren Commission's timeline

Between 12:05 and 12:40 Rex did a normal show including commercials for the Jimmy Stewart movie "Taker Her She's Mine" and John Wayne's movie "McClintock". The KLIF contest being aired at the time was for listeners to count the number of "whopees" they heard broadcast during a given period. Gary DeLaune's first bulletin interrupted the song "I Have A Boyfriend" by "The Chiffons". That was at 12:40 p.m.

http://www.klifhistory.com/pgtwo.html

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Thanks to Gary Mack for this email:

KLIF was not the first local radio station to break into programming with a news bulletin about the assassination. That distinction apparently belongs to WFAA-AM radio. John Allen was monitoring the police radio in his newsroom, heard Chief Curry mention "Signal 19 involving the President" and immediately went on the air with that information, which would likely have been no later than 12:32. Allen made the claim in the 1964 WFAA-TV documentary, "A Year Ago Today," but his information cannot be verified since no audio tapes are known to exist.

Other stations likely interrupted immediately upon receiving the first UPI bulletin, which cleared the wire at 12:35.

Gary

[Duke Lane]

KLIF was not the first local radio station to break into programming with a news bulletin about the assassination. That distinction apparently belongs to WFAA-AM radio. John Allen was monitoring the police radio in his newsroom, heard Chief Curry mention "Signal 19 involving the President" and immediately went on the air with that information, which would likely have been no later than 12:32. Allen made the claim in the 1964 WFAA-TV documentary, "A Year Ago Today," but his information cannot be verified since no audio tapes are known to exist.

Other stations likely interrupted immediately upon receiving the first UPI bulletin, which cleared the wire at 12:35.

The timing works; McWatters said that he left Elm & St. Paul at 12:36, his scheduled time for doing so, known to be fact because a supervisor stayed there all day to make sure busses arrived and departed from that particular location on time. It was, according to his testimony, a way to keep the busses running on time as well as to identify drivers who couldn't keep to a schedule and reprimand them.

He also estimated that he'd have arrived at Field Street at 12:40. It was at some point in the long block between Field and Griffith that either a man, or a man and a woman, got onto his bus, an event agreed upon by all of the three who gave statements about this: Cecil McWatters, the bus driver; Roy Milton Jones, the teen-aged rider; and Mary Bledsoe, Oswald's supposed former landlady.

(I qualify that only on account of the fact that the only "proof" she had of Oswald's tenancy in her home was the knowledge that he had a blue clothes-bag of some sort, and a torn-out page from her calendar that she no longer had because her son had sold it to a Mike Neiburh for four dollars. Neibuhr was tracked down and interviewed on 11/28 by the FBI, and he showed them the page which had noted on it simply, in the October 7 space, "From Oswald" and, in the October 14 space, "To Oswald." While the FBI report (by SA Robert Lish) said it bore "the handwriting notation of Lee Harvey Oswald," there is no indication that either Lish was a handwriting expert, or that the FBI had analyzed Oswald's handwriting that early in the investigation in order for anyone to have made such a determination at that point. While Lish took a photo of the page for the Dallas FBI office, I'm unaware of that handwriting being identified as Oswald's or - based on what little I know of handwriting analysis - that it could be definitively said to be his.)

I've spent some time going over the various reports involving these three people to compare and contrast their versions of events, and I find enough similarities to suggest that all three were indeed on the same bus, or that there had been enough in the newspapers over the weekend for Mary to have put together a credible story. In any case, based on what she had to say, I'm not convinced that the man she saw had to be Lee Oswald, despite various critics' contention that of course her identification of him is reliable: she was his former landlady, she owed him two dollars, and was mostly concerned with his not noticing her and asking for it. Of those three claims, only the first is true.

Before delving into that aspect, first let's examine some of the similarities and differences between the three people's statements. Cecil McWatters gave an affidavit on November 22, was interviewed by the FBI on either Friday or Saturday, November 22 or 23 (both dates are on the first page of the interview, CD5, pages 346-47, which might explain Jones' statement that McWatters had told him that "the Dallas Police had him up until 1:00 o'clock on Saturday or Sunday morning questioning him;" see below), and gave testimony on March 12, 1964. Bledsoe was interviewed several times, including on 11/23 (CD5, page 340), 11/27 (CD5, page 342) and 12/4 (CD1066, page 183)of 1963 as well as 5/4/1964 (CD7, page 302), all in addition to her November 22 affidavit and April 2 testimony. Jones was interviewed by the FBI on March 30, 1964 (CD897, page 185-88).

Here are the issues arising through them:

• Mary Bledsoe said that she'd watched the Presidential parade at Main and St. Paul and had walked over to Elm Street where she boarded a bus "approximately ten minutes after the motorcade had passed St. Paul and Main," which was at some point between 12:22 and 12:26 according to the police radio transcript of Channel Two. McWatters stated that he'd departed the stop at 12:36, which he was certain of because that was where a route supervisor stationed himself all day to make certain that the busses were running on schedule, and he would not have been allowed to leave earlier than the prescribed departure time.
  
• Bledsoe said that she'd gotten on the bus at Elm and St. Paul, either at the same stop that Milton Jones had gotten on or the one immediately after it; McWatters didn't think he'd picked up anyone there, but had only discharged a woman passenger there; Jones was silent on the question (which wasn't asked of him).
  
• Both McWatters and Jones said that Jones had been sitting on the first seat facing forward on the right-hand side of the bus, which was directly abaft a seat that faced the center of the bus, which in turn was located directly abaft of the front entry door. Bledsoe said that she sat "in a seat directly opposite the driver facing the aisle" directly behind the front doorway, where she "always sat" so she could get off the bus easily (see diagram - CE373 - below).
  
• Neither Jones nor McWatters mentioned her or anyone occupying that seat at all, even though Jones would have been looking directly at someone there in his seat, and even though Jones and McWatters engaged in small talk with each other at one point during the traffic jam, "talking through her" as if she - or anybody else - wasn't even there. Neither of the men were asked if anyone fitting Mrs. Bledsoe's description was indeed on the bus, or if anyone had been sitting in the seat between their positions.
  
• Bledsoe estimated that there were, at different times, anywhere from "very few" to 10 or 15 passengers on the bus at the time; Jones estimated that there were 15; McWatters, who would presumably have been more aware of how many people were on his bus simply because it was the business he engaged in every day, said that there were only five.
  
• Jones said that both a man and a woman got on the bus, the woman proceeding to the rear and the man sitting directly behind him; McWatters only mentioned the man who "beat on the door ... paid his fair and sat down on the second cross seat on the right," later also noting that Jones was sitting in the first cross seat on McWatters' right, corroborating Jones' story; Bledsoe only described the one man - Oswald - getting on the bus, "pay his fare, and immediate walk to the rear of the bus where he sat down," not merely two seats back from her as both men had independently described.
  
• McWatters said the man was dressed in "what I would call work clothes" with "just some type of little old jacket on," not describing his clothing further; Jones noted a man who wore a "light blue jacket and gray trousers" (a similar description to cab driver William Whaley's); Bledsoe also said he'd had on gray trousers, but instead wore a "brown or dark brown" shirt and no jacket. The pedigree of her observation, however, was more than just a little suspect: she later said that when she'd gotten home, she "turned on the radio - television - and ... we listened and heard about the President ... and they kept talking about this boy Oswald and [he] had on a brown shirt, and all of a sudden, well, I declare, I believe that this was this boy."
  
• Nothing about the man's demeanor struck either McWatters or Jones as unusual, out of the ordinary, or suspicious; both said that he did not appear nervous or excited, but just a "normal passenger;" Bledsoe, on the other hand, described him as looking "wild," like "a maniac," his face "distorted," his clothes "dirty and disheveled." She described his shirt as "undone," his "sleeve was out here," she said, making some sort of physical indication of what she meant; his waistline was "ragged," the tops of his trousers badly worn; there was a hole in the elbow of his "brown or dark-brown" shirt. (In the end, only her final observation was borne out ... but that in a shirt that Oswald had not been wearing at the time.)
  
• Jones said that a woman and a man had gotten off the bus at the same time; so did McWatters, the latter adding the detail (which Jones may have been unaware of) that the woman had wanted to get to Union Station; Bledsoe also described the woman who wanted to get to the train station, but noted that she had told the woman that it was only a short distance away and suggested to her "why don't you walk?" She also said that the woman got off after Oswald. Once again, Bledsoe was unseen and unheard by the other two, even while interjecting her helpful suggestion directly into a conversation that McWatters, at least, was fully aware of.
  

(Below is a diagram of McWatters' bus, entered as Exhibit 373 during McWatters' testimony before the Warren Commission. He was asked to mark the locations of the various people he described including an "L" directly behind the driver's seat at the upper right where the lady who got a transfer from him - see below - had been sitting; an "M" where the man who'd boarded his bus and also received a transfer from him had sat; an "O" where the teenager Milton Jones was sitting, and a "P" where the man who had told him about a radio report of the President getting shot had stood. This diagram will also be useful for determining where Mary Bledsoe said she was sitting. See the

Google bus route map

.)

Several other things must be said about Mary Bledsoe. First that she was an older woman, having been divorced from her husband since 1925 after several years of marriage beginning at age 17; somewhere, perhaps, between 60 and 65. Compounding whatever issues her age alone may have engendered, she had also had a stroke at some time during her life, which if nothing else certainly affected her stamina (she needed to take frequent naps); judging from her testimony, it may also have impaired her memory as well. Either or both could account for the differences between her and the men's statements, as could the simple vaguaries of human memory.

Third, at the risk of sounding like a pseudo-psychologist, she comes across as a bitter woman, with strong dislikes (and few likes) that could be triggered by anything ... or nothing. As a young woman, she and her husband had "problems" over which she'd divorced him in a time when divorces weren't commonplace; she'd raised her children alone through the Depression and WWII; she'd been debilitated at least somewhat by her stroke; and by September 1963, her kids had moved out, leaving her living alone with boarders she couldn't or wouldn't keep, but whose rent payments she was keenly desirous of.

Oswald - if he ever really lived with her - was at first a clean-looking young man, neat in appearance and pleasant in manner, talking about his family, showing her a photo of his wife and daughter, someone whom she "helped" to look for a job for at least one day, but whom she nevertheless complained she had to all but force him to talk with her. On his first day in her home, he bought groceries and milk, the former which he stored in his room and the latter in her refrigerator, which she didn't like but said nothing about. He used her phone; she didn't like that either. He went into the refrigerator, going in and out of his room, "too much." He'd go job-hunting in the morning and return in the early afternoon, disturbing her naps which also annoyed her.

All during this time, it was as if she wanted him to open up to her, yet at the same time leave her alone: don't stay in your room, but don't come out into my kitchen; she described Oswald as virtually never coming out except to drink "lots of ice water since he was in and out of the refrigerator too much." At the same time, she claimed almost never to pay attention to things; indeed, her litany of the things she "didn't like" was second only to the number of times she said she "didn't pay attention" or "wasn't paying attention" to whatever issue was at hand during her deposition, which was most of them.

In fact, about the only thing she did "pay attention" to was Oswald's supposed dress and demeanor on McWatters' bus, even while at every turn on that occasion she also claimed to not have been paying attention to him, and purposely trying not to. The reason, however, at least insofar as she actually said it was, was that "when she observed [him] looking so dirty and disheveled, she turned her head away from him not wishing to converse with him" because "she felt this was strange inasmuch as when he resided with her he had been very neat in his personal appearance."

The apparent final straw came for her when Oswald got a phone call and spoke with the caller in a foreign language; she said she told her girl friend that she "didn't like" people talking in a language she didn't understand. She did not know what language it was, and admitted even being unfamiliar with the Spanish language ... after living in Texas her whole life! When she next spoke with Lee, he was leaving the house with a bag full of what she supposed were clothes, which prompted her to ask him if he was moving. He replied that he was going to Irving for the weekend, and asked her if she would neaten his room and change the sheets. She in turn replied that she would clean his room "when he moved," which she further assured him that he was going to be doing because she no longer wished to rent to him!

It was this incident that gave rise to the supposed two dollar "debt" she owed him ... but as she described it, she apparently never felt as if there was any such debt. After telling him he had to leave her house, Oswald offered to take all of his things with him right then if she would refund him the dollar-a-day rent for the remaining two days of the week. She said she didn't have it, so he left without taking anything else with him. In sum, even though he wasn't in the house over the weekend, he occupied the room for the balance of his rental period, ergo there was no money due him from her; she, for her part, never suggested that there was.

This, then, is a snapshot of the woman whose statements "firmly" place Lee Oswald on the bus from which a transfer had been issued in the minutes following the assassination of President Kennedy. Her identification of Oswald as the male passenger who'd boarded the bus mid-block is based on her initial impression of a man whose appearance and demeanor were diametrically opposed to her own impression of Oswald from less than six weeks before, after which she purposefully avoided "paying attention" to him because she despised him so. Bledsoe's description of his appearance and demeanor was also completely at odds with both McWatters and Jones'.

Reviewing McWatters and Jones' statements and testimony, it is clear that the two men were on the same bus and had largely witnessed the same events. Jones' came more than four months after they'd occurred which, coupled with his age (17), may account for many of the disparities between them.

Only Mary Bledsoe was convinced that the male passenger who lately boarded the bus was Lee Oswald. Because the man was sitting directly behind him, Jones didn't get a good look at him, and did not think later that it was Oswald until McWatters told him that he "might have been" on the following Monday. Only after McWatters mentioned it did Jones agree that it "was possible that it could have been Oswald," but "emphasized" that he could not positively identify the man as having been Oswald. "He was inclined to think it was Oswald only because the driver told him so," his FBI interviewers duly noted.

(In its

Report

, the WC made but one reference to Jones as follows: "In his Commission testimony, McWatters said that he had been in error [about picking Oswald out of a lineup as the man who had boarded his bus at the lower end of downtown and who, during the ride south on Marsalis, had an argument with a woman passenger - ?!?] and that a teenager named Milton Jones was the passenger he had in mind. In a later interview, Jones confirmed that he had exchanged words with a female passenger on the bus ride south on Marsalis." This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts - there was never an "argument" discussed by anyone - and in fact, nobody even said that Jones said anything at all to the woman, much less "exchanged words" with her! It also completely eliminates Jones' failure to identify Oswald, as will be seen. [

WCR159

])

McWatters, for his part, seems to have been convinced by police that it had been Oswald on the bus rather than to have reached that conclusion on his own. During his interview with FBI agents on the 22nd or 23rd, he repeatedly referred to Jones as being the man he'd tried to identify in a lineup at police headquarters. First he noted that, after he had turned onto Marsalis Avenue, he had asked "a male passenger on the bus" where he thought they'd shot the President; "in the temple," the man replied.

While Jones did not remember (or "denied" if you prefer) this particular conversation, McWatters went on to relate telling a woman who'd entered the bus at Vermont and Marsalis (about 12 blocks south of Jefferson Boulevard, well past where Oswald would have gotten off if he was the man in question) about the President being shot. She didn't believe him, so McWatters told here "to ask the man sitting behind him," who was the same one who "had told McWatters that the President had been shot in the temple" and had "a sort of grin on his face."

Not only did Jones relate that same "grinning" story in essentially the same way, but McWatters, while he could not be sure, believed that the man had gotten off the bus "south of Saner Avenue in Oak Cliff." In fact, Jones had alit from the bus at the corner of East Brownlee Street, the street on which he lived, one block south of Saner.

When McWatters went to the police station, he picked a man - Oswald - whom he said was "the only one in the lineup who resembles the man who had ridden on his bus" on the 22nd. McWatters further stated that "this man is Lee Oswald," but "emphasized that he cannot specifically identify him as being on his bus or as being the person who had made the remark" about the President being shot in the temple.

Indeed, in his sworn affidavit of November 22, McWatters describes having gone "on out Marsalis and picked up a woman" who didn't believe him about the President being shot. He told her to "ask the man behind her," who was grinning at the time. "This man," he said, clearly referring to Jones, "looks like the #2 man I saw in a line-up tonight," who was Oswald.

What is more noteworthy about these passages is that at no time did McWatters exclaim or express anything to the effect that, "wow, you wanted to know about the boy and just happened to show me the guy who'd gotten on my bus downtown!" There was, in sum, no recognition of Oswald by McWatters.

This is striking because McWatters recalled clearly issuing two transfers because "a woman with a suitcase" who "wanted to go to Union Station" did ask for a transfer so she could get back onto the bus if it got through traffic quickly; she'd thought it might be faster if she'd walked. "So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and as she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about 2 blocks [before] asked for a transfer and got off at the same place in the middle of the block where the lady did," McWatters testified.

Moreover, he also testified that he "only gave two transfers going through town on that trip and that was at the one stop of where I gave the lady and the gentleman that got off the bus, I issued two transfers. But that was the only two transfers that were issued. ... I only put out two transfers and I told them [Dallas Police] that there was one man in the lineup [who] was about the size and the height and complexion of a man that got on my bus, but as far as positively identifying the man I could not do it." Police and the WC were nevertheless satisfied that McWatters had, in fact, seen Oswald on his bus and given him a transfer.

Mary Bledsoe was completely unaware of this transaction despite sitting in the very front of the bus "directly opposite" the driver. Oswald, she said, "got up from the rear seat ... came to the front of the bus [and] got off the front entrance at the next stop," even while, in her opinion, "he could have gotten off the side [back] door but he did not do so," something which apparently irked the fickle Mrs. Bledsoe.

She did not recall him asking for a transfer: "they said he did, but I don't remember him saying anything," she asserted in her testimony. "I didn't pay any attention but I believe he did" get a transfer, she stated baldly, causing some consternation on the part of counsel:

Mr. Ball.

Well, what do you mean he — you believe he did? Did you remember seeing him get on or are you telling me something you read in the newspapers?

Mrs. Bledsoe.

No; I don't remember. I don't remember.

Mr. Ball.

Did you pay any attention at that time as to whether he did, or did not get a transfer?

Mrs. Bledsoe.

I didn't pay any attention to him

.

Mr. Ball.

Well,

did you look at him

as he got off the bus?

Mrs. Bledsoe.

No; I sure didn't

. I didn't want to know him. [emphases added]

Thus the woman who studiously avoided even looking at the man (whom she may not even have recognized at the time as being her erstwhile boarder until watching later news reports about his capture) thus was able to identify him positively as being on the bus, even while every detail that she recalled about his actions and appearance - other than wearing gray trousers - was in stark contradiction to the observations of both the bus driver and a passenger sitting right next to her, neither of whom mentioned her or were asked if they'd seen her.

Neither was counsel entirely convinced of Mary Bledsoe's veracity or accuracy. On a separate but related question - how she was certain that Oswald was wearing the shirt he'd been arrested in while on the bus (before, that is, he went home to presumably change his shirt) - she was actually challenged by counsel Joe Ball: "In order to convince me that you did see it before you've got to tell me what there is about it that is the same, you see. Now, you try to convince me, or tell me why it is that you believe that this is the shirt that Oswald had on when you saw him on the bus?"

Ultimately, Ball allowed himself to be convinced either actually or at a signal from co-counsel Alfred Jenner, who took over questioning after this curious exchange about the trousers worn by the man on the bus:

Mr. Ball

. I have two exhibits here. One Commission Exhibit 157, Exhibit 157, and Commission 156, both pants. Have you ever seen either one of those before?

Mrs. Bledsoe

. Now, is that long pants?

Mr. Ball

. Yes; this is 157.

Mrs. Bledsoe

. Well, that is not the ones he had on.

Mr. Ball

. That is not?

Mrs. Bledsoe

.

No; it was ragged up at the top

.

Mr. Ball

. This other pair of pants, 156, does that look like any of the pants he had on?

Mrs. Bledsoe

. That must have been it, but [it]

seemed like it was ragged up at the top

.

Mr. Ball

.

But

, you think 156 may have been the pair of pants he had on?

Mrs. Bledsoe

. Yes.

Mr. Ball.

You think 157 - don't pay any attention to the fact that it is cut up [due to emergency procedures after Oswald was shot] does 157 look anything like the pants he had on?

Mrs. Bledsoe

. No; I don't —

Mr. Ball.

You don't think so?

Mrs. Bledsoe

. No, sir.

Mr. Ball.

I have no more questions to ask you now, Mrs. Bledsoe, but Mr. Jenner will ask you some questions

At this point, Jenner took over and attempted to pin Mrs. Bledsoe down on any of the so many things that she said she simply "paid no attention to," which turned out to be an exercise in futility even when assisted by Mary's own attorney.

Thus we are left with the identification of Oswald being the recipient of one of two transfers issued by McWatters resting solely upon the description of a shrew of a woman who was apparently on McWatters' bus despite her not being noticed by any of the other principals interviewed; who despised her former tenant (who could only be identified as such by cryptic and meaningless notations on a calendar no longer in her possession); who did her best not to even look at the man in question; whose description of his actions and appearance were completely at odds with all of the others'; and who did not in fact even "put two and two together," however erroneously or correctly, until after she watched news reports in which "they kept talking about this boy Oswald and [he] had on a brown shirt," which she suddenly and only thereafter attributed to a man on the bus contrary to the descriptions provided by McWatters and Jones, but also of every description by every witness who gave a description of Oswald from 12:30 forward until Oswald's arrest in the theater.

Her only tenuous link to being an actual witness to Oswald being that man is her dubious recollection of a hole being in the elbow of Oswald's shirt, and her identification of his trousers by process of elimination in which, since the first pair shown her was not ragged around the waist, the other pair must have been ... but wasn't.

And so we return to the proposition that I put forth in Post #51, et seq., that it is far from a certainty that it was Oswald and only Oswald who could have received the McWatters bus transfer that was eventually entered into evidence as having been found upon his person following his arrest, and that it is indeed possible for someone else to have obtained it and for it later to have been "found" on Oswald, and that a firm identification of the transfer recipient being Oswald based upon his former landlady's identification of him is tenuous at best.

Were it not for the two details that she did get right - where the man had gotten onto the bus and about the lady who'd gotten off to walk to the train station - one might readily accept the proposition that Mary Bledsoe had even been on McWatters' bus at all. The only remaining question in this regard is whether there might have been any news reports about this incident prior to Mary's going to police headquarters later that night, just as there had been about Oswald's brown shirt.

[Don Jeffries]

Duke,

Thanks for such a detailed, informative post. Having the opportunity to read posts like that is the main reason most of us came here in the first place.

[Antti Hynonen]

Duke,

Great post, lots of detail.

Question 1: Did Oswald ever deny boarding the bus or did he ever deny having obtained a bus transfer ticket that day?

Question 2: Assuming Oswald did have a bus transfer ticket, and assuming he obtained it as the WC claimed and as the transfer ticket in evidence indicates, what further destination would he have needed the transfer for?

More questions: Wouldn't McWatters' bus have taken him to Harlandale, I mean close enough to his room at North Beckley? What was his likely destination after N. Beckley? Didn't his landlady at N. Beckley say that she saw him out the window at the bus stop across the street shortly after 1 p.m. on 11/22/63?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Only Mary Bledsoe was convinced that the male passenger who lately boarded the bus was Lee Oswald. Because the man was sitting directly behind him, Jones didn't get a good look at him, and did not think later that it was Oswald until McWatters told him that he "might have been" on the following Monday.

Lee Oswald was just another face in the crowd to Jones and McWatters, but Mrs. Bledsoe said she knew him, and no witness ever contradicted her on that issue.

Neither was counsel entirely convinced of Mary Bledsoe's veracity or accuracy. On a separate but related question - how she was certain that Oswald was wearing the shirt he'd been arrested in while on the bus (before, that is, he went home to presumably change his shirt) - she was actually challenged by counsel Joe Ball: "In order to convince me that you did see it before you've got to tell me what there is about it that is the same, you see. Now, you try to convince me, or tell me why it is that you believe that this is the shirt that Oswald had on when you saw him on the bus?"

It is one thing to recognize someone you know, which is easy to do, but it is not so easy to recall exactly what someone was wearing. Bledsoe's clothing description does not sound very reliable, as Ball obviously recognized.

Her only tenuous link to being an actual witness to Oswald being that man is her dubious recollection of a hole being in the elbow of Oswald's shirt, and her identification of his trousers by process of elimination in which, since the first pair shown her was not ragged around the waist, the other pair must have been ... but wasn't.

The conclusion that Bledsoe saw Oswald on the bus does not rest on her description of his clothing, but on her claim that he had been a tenant in her house, and she knew him on sight. Her description of his clothing seems pretty worthless.

Is it your theory that Bledsoe was simply mistaken when she identified Oswald, or are you suggesting that she lied?

Doesn't Bledsoe's identification tie in with what Lee Oswald is reported to have told Fritz during interrogation?

[Duke Lane]

Question 1: Did Oswald ever deny boarding the bus or did he ever deny having obtained a bus transfer ticket that day?

Please bear in mind that my responses are to the limits of what we know as fact. Just because someone said something under oath does not mean it is a fact. If more than one person said the same or similar things independent of each other, we can put more stock in it.

Question 1: We don't know for certain what Oswald said at any time, or what he was necessarily asked. I've only looked at what appears to have transpired on the bus. If memory serves beyond that, there was either a question about a bus or cab that Oswald responded to the effect of "I told you I did" (get on the bus or whatever). Getting on a bus does not necessitate a transfer, so even if he'd gotten onto one, doesn't mean that the transfer in evidence would be his. I cannot state with certainty that he was asked about the transfer as opposed to merely being on a bus.

Another consideration is that, while Oswald may even have asserted that he'd taken a bus, what bus did he take? Clearly, McWatters' bus would have been the first - after 12:40 anyway - Marsalis bus to have gone through the Elm/Houston intersection, but according to what Mary Bledsoe had to say at various times, that was not the only bus route that Oswald may have had a choice to have taken.

Mary Bledsoe's 11/24 interview notes, for example, that "she got on a bus, as she recalls, a Marsalis bus," suggesting that there may have been another bus she could've taken. In her testimony, when asked what bus she'd gotten on, she replied, "Well, I don't remember whether it was the Marsalis or the Romana," now clearly demonstrating that a second route could have gotten her home, their routes diverging at some point afterward. If the Romana bus went over the Houston Street viaduct (which empties onto Zangs Boulevard, which in turn shortly intersects with Beckley) and then turned south on Marsalis toward Mary's house, Oswald could have taken that bus and only had a short walk home, the same as he would have if he'd have taken a Marsalis bus.

We know that McWatters' bus got held up in traffic some four blocks before reaching Houston Street; what we don't know is whether or where ahead of McWatters the Romana bus might've been. If it had been ahead of McWatters somewhere in that traffic jam, it would have gotten through the intersection before McWatters and possibly picked up Oswald at its first stop thereafter, probably the same place McWatters would've stopped (as he testified), at Main and Houston.

It cannot be excluded from the realm of possibilities simply because none of the drivers from that route were apparently questioned and none testified or gave statements. If he had gotten on a Romana bus, whether or not he'd gotten a transfer (which he'd have had no need of in any case), then the validity of his statement of being - or lack of denial of not being - on a bus remains the same.

Question 2: Assuming Oswald did have a bus transfer ticket, and assuming he obtained it as the WC claimed and as the transfer ticket in evidence indicates, what further destination would he have needed the transfer for?

Although I've yet to show that your wife is dead, but assuming you killed her, can you tell us some reasons why?

This is one of the difficulties in evaluating evidence in this case, because people are willing to accomodate two sets of conflicting data into their evaluation. For example, Oswald "could not have walked from Beckley to 10th in time to shoot Tippit," but assuming he did, what reason did he have for leaving his jacket behind the Texaco station? Well, since he wasn't able to be there, and since the presumption is that the killer dropped it, how does Oswald's motivation for dropping it come into play if he wasn't and couldn't have been the killer?

Going forth from the presumption that it was him on McWatters' bus and getting a transfer before getting off, then there need be no further destination in mind other than to do as the "suitcase lady" was doing: walking through the traffic jam and maybe catching the same bus on the other side of it ... which I recall Mary Bledsoe having said exactly that happened in her case.

More questions: Wouldn't McWatters' bus have taken him to Harlandale, I mean close enough to his room at North Beckley? What was his likely destination after N. Beckley? Didn't his landlady at N. Beckley say that she saw him out the window at the bus stop across the street shortly after 1 p.m. on 11/22/63?

McWatters' bus would've taken him closer to Harlandale, within 6-7 blocks, as this map shows (click the little "street view" guy to take a look around the neighborhood of the supposed "safe house" - that's the yellow one, btw). I have no idea where he might have gone after Beckley, if he'd gone to Beckley, and the location where the blind-in-one-eye and distracted Earlene Roberts said it was on the northbound side of the street, i.e., the same side.

All points being simply being - as I will expand on in my response to Ray Carroll - that the facts in evidence do not establish Oswald's whereabouts beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what Occam's Razor might dictate, for that theorem suggests that every single person who's brought to trial absolutely, positively did whatever it is they're accused of ... because that is, quite simply, the simplest solution.

If your lawyer subscribes to that theory, fire him.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

the facts in evidence do not establish Oswald's whereabouts beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what Occam's Razor might dictate, for that theorem suggests that every single person who's brought to trial absolutely, positively did whatever it is they're accused of ... because that is, quite simply, the simplest solution.

If your lawyer subscribes to that theory, fire him.

We require proof beyond reasonable doubt when someone is accused of a criminal act.

There is NOTHING in the LEAST bit criminal about taking a bus, so long as the passenger pays the fare.

So I do not understand why ANYONE would want to prove that Lee Oswald did NOT take McWatter's bus that day.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

All points being simply being ..... that the facts in evidence do not establish Oswald's whereabouts beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what Occam's Razor might dictate, for that theorem suggests that every single person who's brought to trial absolutely, positively did whatever it is they're accused of ... because that is, quite simply, the simplest solution.

If your lawyer subscribes to that theory, fire him.

Occam's Razor suggests NO SUCH thing. Occam's theorem says that assumptions should not be multiplied, and it is a Theorem that holds great wisdom.

The version of the theorem that you presented here is an oversimplification, and is only true if the word "simple" is understood to mean a proposition requiring no assumptions at all, or one requiring fewer assumptions than any competing proposition.

In the example of a person being brought to trial, our wise ancestors discovered that the simplest explanation is that the accused is innocent. If a man is sitting in a cinema, peacefully watching a movie, then is forcibly seized by police and charged with a crime, it requires a great many assumptions to accept, without evidence, that the man is guilty. You have to assume that the arrest was lawful, that the authorities are acting in good faith, and that the police were relying on truthful witnesses, etc etc. There are a great many assumptions involved in suggesting that only guilty people are brought to trial, but only one assumption is needed if you begin by believing that the accused is innocent. The legal presumption of innocence that we hold so dear is actually an example of Occam's Razor operating at it's sharpest.

[Duke Lane]

Only Mary Bledsoe was convinced that the male passenger who lately boarded the bus was Lee Oswald. Because the man was sitting directly behind him, Jones didn't get a good look at him, and did not think later that it was Oswald until McWatters told him that he "might have been" on the following Monday.

Lee Oswald was just another face in the crowd to Jones and McWatters, but Mrs. Bledsoe said she knew him, and no witness ever contradicted her on that issue.

Nor, clearly, was any effort made to find someone who might have, or who might even have shored up her character (as, for example, not being someone who was "prone to exaggeration"). McWatters, who was on the stand at one point, was not asked about her; neither was Jones, who was not called to testify but was interviewed. Other than her relating things that - presumably - someone would "only have known if they'd been there" (and they weren't on TV), there is nobody who corroborates Mary Bledsoe even having gone downtown to watch the parade that day, much less witnessed any of this stuff.

The problem is that Mary Bledsoe was prone to exaggeration, as well as leaping to conclusions, and being judgmental, prejudiced, and probably spiteful to boot.

Consider the fact that nobody contradicted Arnold Rowland either and the circumstances that arose from that!

Neither was counsel entirely convinced of Mary Bledsoe's veracity or accuracy. On a separate but related question - how she was certain that Oswald was wearing the shirt he'd been arrested in while on the bus (before, that is, he went home to presumably change his shirt) - she was actually challenged by counsel Joe Ball: "In order to convince me that you did see it before you've got to tell me what there is about it that is the same, you see. Now, you try to convince me, or tell me why it is that you believe that this is the shirt that Oswald had on when you saw him on the bus?"

It is one thing to recognize someone you know, which is easy to do, but it is not so easy to recall exactly what someone was wearing. Bledsoe's clothing description does not sound very reliable, as Ball obviously recognized.

So, what are you doing, telling us the criteria by which you select which of an unreliable witness's statements you deem reliable? Consider Mary's initial statement at DCSO on 11/23/63:

Last Friday [

sic

], November 22, 1963, I went downtown to see the President. I stood on Main Street just across the street from Titche's [Department Store] until the parade passed by. Then I walked over to Elm Street and caught a bus to go home. The bus traveled West on Elm Street to about Murphy Street and made a stop and that is when I saw Lee Oswald get on the bus. The traffic was heavy and

it took quite some time to travel two or three blocks

. During that time someone made the statement that the President had been shot and while the bus was stopped due to the heavy traffic, Oswald got off the bus and I didn't see him again. I know this man was Lee Oswald because he lived in my home from October 7, 1963 to October 14, 1963. /s/ Mrs. Mary E. Bledsoe [emphases added]

Compare that to her testimony in which she said that the first thing she'd done after getting home was go to her neighbor's house to tell them the news; then she went home when some neighborhood 'boy' came by and turned on the TV, which they watched together until he left. Then her son came home, she supposedly told him about seeing Oswald on the bus, and called the police immediately, but didn't give a statement until the next day, at the Sheriff's Department rather than DPD.

And what she said was that she'd simply noticed - or thought she'd noticed - Lee Oswald get on the bus and then get off, and that's about it.

Put this in the context of a woman who, when Oswald moved in, she said he'd come to her and said, "'Well, where is the grocery store?' Well, I [Mary Bledsoe] said, 'It is down that way,' but I didn't want him to use the kitchen, so, he said, 'I'm going to get some milk,' and so, I didn't like that much, but I didn't say anything about it because I wanted to get along with him."

And he did seem personable at first, mentioning even before they'd gotten into her house that he was married and looking for a job.

... And so, [when he said that, it] give me a lead, something to talk about, and I said, "Well, what kind of work do you do?" "Oh, I do electronics," he said, and I said, "Well, there is some good jobs because you are young, and you can get a good job a young man like you." And then [he] went on. Then something about him being in the Marines, and I said, "Well, that is wonderful. My son was in the Navy." And talking about him, you know, just getting to know him, and - but, "here is a picture of my wife, and picture of the girl, and the baby." And I said, "Oh, she has got a baby, hasn't she?" And he said, "Yes."

Within days after this apparently pleasant exchange, she decided that -

[H]e was not a man to talk, you know,

what I got out of him, I had to get it out of him

, because it was hard to - because I wanted to see what kind of a person he was, and it was hard to get, you know, to judge him in such a short time. ... And

everything he said, I had to pull it out of him

to talk about something for him to say what it was."

I didn't like his attitude.

He was just kind of like this, you know, just big shot, you know

, and I didn't have anything to say to him, and - but, I didn't like him. There was just something about him I didn't like or want him - just wasn't the kind of person I wanted. Just didn't want him around me.

... and so she threw him out.

I would submit that, given her warm personal feelings toward the "big shot" Oswald and the publicity surrounding and condemning him in the aftermath of the shooting, it is not unlikely that those feelings just gushed forth and germinated in what was obviously a very fertile imagination. All of the rest grew from there and was fertilized by the clothing that the FBI brought by her house to examine, resulting in a "strong" identification of Oswald on the bus.

The conclusion that Bledsoe saw Oswald on the bus does not rest on her description of his clothing, but on her claim that he had been a tenant in her house, and she knew him on sight. Her description of his clothing seems pretty worthless. Is it your theory that Bledsoe was simply mistaken when she identified Oswald, or are you suggesting that she lied? Doesn't Bledsoe's identification tie in with what Lee Oswald is reported to have told Fritz during interrogation?

I don't know exactly what to think, except that I don't think that Bledsoe's a reliable witness, or that her testimony should be taken at face value simply because she claimed to know Oswald.

I say "claimed" to know because he had only lived at her house for part of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday. Much if not most of that time he was either away from the house or in his room. It had been a month since he'd been there, and she pointed out no less than 46 times in her 28 pages of testimony how much she "didn't pay attention to" a lot of things, and I submit Lee Oswald was one of them.

The clothes "cinched" her identification of him, for with all her "I don't know's" and "didn't pay attention's," there really wasn't anything else of substance to her testimony beyond her recognizing the clothes the FBI had brought by her house to show her, and her ability to recognize them "again," which fell on its face. The Report didn't "rely" on McWatters' testimony (or even take Jones'), but instead utilized Bledsoe and her "identification" of as well as her "familiarity" with Oswald to put him on the "escape bus."

This exchange shows that she saw someone whom she at least thought was Lee Oswald board the bus, and did her studious best to avoid even looking at him again:

Mr. Ball

. Well,

did you look at him

as he got off the bus?

Mrs. Bledsoe

.

No; I sure didn't

. I didn't want to know him.

Mr. Ball

. Well, you think you got enough of a glimpse of him to be able to recognize him?

Mrs. Bledsoe

. Oh, yes.

Mr. Ball

. You think you might be mistaken?

Mrs. Bledsoe

. Oh, no.

Mr. Ball

. You

didn't look very carefully

, did you?

Mrs. Bledsoe

.

No; I just glanced at him, and then looked the other way

and I hoped he didn't see me.

I think she convinced herself of what she'd seen, and her feelings toward her former boarder - who wouldn't entertain her, who stayed mostly to himself in his room, used her refrigerator and phone, woke her up from her afternoon naps, and (of all things!) spoke in a foreign language (which might've been Spanish, like half the people in Texas speak!) that she couldn't understand - simply enhanced her recollection. The FBI's displaying the clothing to her beforehand gave her a better straw to grasp.

The point to this is simply that her testimony is worthless toward putting him on that bus or proving that the transfer was his, not criminal in and of themselves, but potentially probative toward placing him where he wasn't.

[Duke Lane]

All points being simply being ..... that the facts in evidence do not establish Oswald's whereabouts beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what Occam's Razor might dictate, for that theorem suggests that every single person who's brought to trial absolutely, positively did whatever it is they're accused of ... because that is, quite simply, the simplest solution.

If your lawyer subscribes to that theory, fire him.

Occam's Razor suggests NO SUCH thing. Occam's theorem says that assumptions should not be multiplied, and it is a Theorem that holds great wisdom. The version of the theorem that you presented here is an oversimplification, and is only true if the word "simple" is understood to mean a proposition requiring no assumptions at all, or one requiring fewer assumptions than any competing proposition.

In the example of a person being brought to trial, our wise ancestors discovered that the simplest explanation is that the accused is innocent. If a man is sitting in a cinema, peacefully watching a movie, then is forcibly seized by police and charged with a crime, it requires a great many assumptions to accept, without evidence, that the man is guilty. You have to assume that the arrest was lawful, that the authorities are acting in good faith, and that the police were relying on truthful witnesses, etc etc. There are a great many assumptions involved in suggesting that only guilty people are brought to trial, but only one assumption is needed if you begin by believing that the accused is innocent. The legal presumption of innocence that we hold so dear is actually an example of Occam's Razor operating at it's sharpest.

We require proof beyond reasonable doubt when someone is accused of a criminal act. There is NOTHING in the LEAST bit criminal about taking a bus, so long as the passenger pays the fare. So I do not understand why ANYONE would want to prove that Lee Oswald did NOT take McWatter's bus that day.

In <ahem!> theorem, I agree with you; it's application we're talking about here, however: the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" has not been around since the Magna Carta (which so happened to also be in Occam's time, more or less), y'know.

Sure, Oswald was innocent as hell, sitting there in that theater with a gun that he pulled on a cop, with another cop dead less than a mile away. Innocent enough, at least, to be brought in for questioning by a bunch of cops in a conservative city with an anything-but-liberal bent as he hollered things like "police brutality" and of "knowing his rights" while a dead President was being flown "home" to Washington.

... And was just as innocent as a veritable parade of people picked him out of thoroughly fair lineups including men of over 250 lbs (or so one of them told me), teenagers, and nattily-dressed detectives. Proof of his trying to kill another cop by way of a dent on the firing pin of another - lucky for Nick McDonald - "dud" round that three officers attested to, along with the FBI. A .38 revolver, the same caliber as had killed JD Tippit, and a rifle found in the building where he'd worked and where none of his co-workers had supposedly seen him during the minutes leading up to the shooting of a United States President; these are all but incidentals.

So, you'd be right that Occam's Razor doesn't apply to a man who'd only ever packed a pistol in a movie house "like boys do" and proclaimed himself quite righteously a "patsy," because the only prevailing assumption that needs be overcome is that Oswald had only ever been innocently watching a movie while his guns did bad deeds unbidden in the same vicinities he'd innocently just happened to be at the times in question.

According to one source, "the version of the Razor most often found in Ockham's work is Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate [Plurality ought never be posited without necessity]," which might be colloquially translated to say "don't oversell the proposition; keep it short and simple." Maybe that would have been best at the outset, but that's not what we've got 45 years later: when they got done nailing down Oswald's coffin, they got out the liquid nails, sealed it with superglue, and wrapped it in shrink-wrap. So, for those non-criminal acts, we have:

Why did Oswald get on a bus? To go home.

Why did he go home? To get his jacket.

Why didn't he have his jacket in the theater?

I checked, and it's also not a crime to leave your jacket near the scene of a murder as long as you didn't also commit the murder.

While it is true that the burden of proof is upon the prosecution, such a proposition requires that the field be leveled by having a defense, otherwise there will be nothing but proof. Each leg of the journey to the theater was painstakingly recreated until it was certain that it was at least possible for the conclusion to be tenable. On which proposition does the weight of assumptions fall in this case?

William Whaley is probably more the lynchpin to the scenario than McWatters, because if by chance he was right and it took him longer to get to Beckley (and presumably the 500 block he'd said rather than the 700 block agreed upon) using his cab rather than the FBI/Secret Service car that was ultimately used to prove the scenario, then everything else blows apart and we are left with a different solution ... but what?

My point all along has been that it cannot be ruled out that the man on the bus was not Lee Oswald, because the sole identifying witness to it is a woman who disliked him and, once she thought she'd seen him, did her best not to look at him. (Of course, there will be the argument that it is precisely because she despised him that she could be certain at a glimpse who he was, whereas if she'd liked him - or better yet, been ambivalent about him - then she'd be more likely to be mistaken.)

If something as innocuous as that will be taken at face value - along with other innocuous things, like getting a jacket from home - because they seem plausible, and all those plausible, possible things add up to the commission of a crime (in this case, the murder of JD Tippit), then each must be examined and ruled in or out on their own merits.

What if Oswald's story had been that he got on the Romana bus and took it to the theater, where he went in to watch the movie and saw the trailers before the feature started? What's up with the Marsalis bus transfer, then? Who was that who went into his room at Beckley, then? And was the police-car toot-toot an event that actually occurred? Was Oswald perhaps the second figure Earlene thought she saw?

The trouble with overstating one's case - disobeying, as it were, Occham's Razor - is the creation of a web in which many more strands can be broken and collapse the tangle altogether. Being supported by so many premises, if any of them are weak enough to disprove - or reduce the likelihood of - the next, what's left?

As it stands, the case is - as I think it was Nicholas Katzenbach who characterized it - "too pat, too obvious."

[Duke Lane]

Oh!

All of this means simply that Oswald's presence on McWatters' bus cannot be proved. Mrs. Bledsoe's very brief and intermittent acquaintence with Oswald and purposeful "not paying attention" to the man on the bus does not establish it. If the first leg collapses, what happens to the second?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

And what she said was that she'd simply noticed - or thought she'd noticed - Lee Oswald get on the bus and then get off, and that's about it.

Now Now, Duke. That looks suspiciously like the technique used by the FBI when reporting on what Carolyn Arnold told them about seeing Lee Oswald downstairs not too many minutes before the shooting.

Like Mary Bledsoe, Carolyn Arnold knew Lee Oswald because she had worked in the same building as he worked for several weeks, yet the FBI reports give the impression that she wasn't sure if she recognized him.

We know today that Carolyn Arnold was quite certain in her identification -- she didn't say she THOUGHT she saw him -- she said she actually did see him, and ditto for Mary Bledsoe. Bledsoe had no doubt it was Oswald, and no one has suggested a motive for her to lie. She may have been prone to exaggerate, but recognizing someone you know is not something that can be exaggerated.

[Duke Lane]

The difference, Ray, is that Carolyn Arnold didn't purposely try to ignore Oswald the moment she saw him and from every moment forward, as Bledsoe did. I'd say the same thing about her if she'd said, for example, "when I saw him coming, I immediately ducked into an office and hid behind the door, didn't come out until his footsteps were gone."

Too, inside the TSBD, the potential number of subjects was significantly smaller: Arnold had only those 73 who worked there to make a mistake from; Bledsoe had the entire city of Dallas and all its visitors.

As for motive - if motive is necessary to be just plain wrong - I would posit "civic duty" based on a false premise.

I didn't say she exaggerated knowing him, but only her actual ability to recognize him and be certain it was him. Are you going to tell me that you've never seen someone in a crowd that you knew, only to find out it was someone else? Even after more scrutiny than Mary gave Lee?

And what if your friend ended up in jail because when you saw "him," "he" was running away from where a bank happened to have been robbed? Is it possible you were wrong? Or would it have to be a "positive ID" because you know him?

Edited October 1, 2008 by Duke Lane