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Oswald Leaving TSBD?


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TSBD employee's standing in the doorway.

From witness testimony we know that Maddie Reese and Ruth Dean were standing next to each other on the second step from the bottom.

Avery Davis and Judith McCully were standing next to each other on one of the lower steps.

Davis.jpg

Reese.jpg

Edited by Robin Unger
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Shaw trial Testimony.

Q: Mr. Frazier, do you recall who you were with during the presidential motorcade?
A: Yes, sir, I can. When I was standing there at the top of the stairs I was standing there by a heavyset lady who worked up in our office, her name is Sara, I forget her last name, but she was standing right there beside me when we watched the motorcade.
Q: Do you recall anyone else who may have been with you?
A: Right down in front of me at the bottom of the steps my foreman Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady were standing there.

 

bottom of the steps  ?

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On 11/19/2017 at 1:42 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

4. The height of the person is about 5'3'' or 63''. The average body height of a woman at their fortieth in 1963 was 63.2'' with the standard error of the mean of 0.1'' .  This data can be read from the National Health Examination Surveys published in  https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf  ,  Table 8.

7. The body height of this lady would be appropriate to match Billy Lovelady's description of Sarah Stanton as "heavy set and short" lady.


Great work on the graphics, Andrej.

However, it seems to me that if the height of the woman is 5' 3", that Lovelady's description of her being short would be wrong. Because 5' 3" was average height for women at the time, as you pointed out.

Suppose you bring the woman forward a little bit, and make her, say, 5 ft tall. She would still appear the same in the photo, but would meet Lovelady's description of her being short. And I'll bet her upper body and face will still be in the shade.

Another possibility is that she indeed is of average height but appears to be shorter due to her being heavyset. An optical illusion.

(BTW, I still can't see Prayer Man standing one step down from the top landing. To me he still appears to be back in the corner of the alcove. Sorry.)

 

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3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:


Great work on the graphics, Andrej.

However, it seems to me that if the height of the woman is 5' 3", that Lovelady's description of her being short would be wrong. Because 5' 3" was average height for women at the time, as you pointed out.

Suppose you bring the woman forward a little bit, and make her, say, 5 ft tall. She would still appear the same in the photo, but would meet Lovelady's description of her being short. And I'll bet her upper body and face will still be in the shade.

Another possibility is that she indeed is of average height but appears to be shorter due to her being heavyset. An optical illusion.

(BTW, I still can't see Prayer Man standing one step down from the top landing. To me he still appears to be back in the corner of the alcove. Sorry.)

 

Thanks, Sandy. The height estimate for the lady in the east corner is provisional, although it is obvious that the person in question is a lady and a short lady. Only when all people are placed in proper locations and the depth of the doorway is eventually decided will the height estimates be final. You are right that moving people forward or backward on the top landing and tilting the doorway one can arrive at estimates differing an inch or so. 

As far as Prayer Man is concerned, you will see him one-foot-down as soon as the model is completed, hopefully before Christmas. 

 

Edited by Andrej Stancak
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Ok, Sandy, since you showed interest, please find here an image just taken from a frying pan. It shows Lovelady (5'8'') at the spot where you and Thomas Graves have found him in Darnell's still. Please note that Lovelady's head must be positioned just under Prayer Man's elbow joint and in a certain distance from the brick column. Lovelady's position can be checked by overlaying the model with Darnell' still. I am not showing an overlay, only a working version of the model, however, you can appreciate that Lovelady's head is about where it is in Darnell' still. If Prayer Man would stand further to the back and closer to the glass window, the distance between his right elbow and Lovelady's head would be larger than it is in Darnell's still. 

Placing all doorway occupants into the doorway is equally important as placing Prayer Man. One figure validates another figure. If all figure locations match the original still, then also the location of Prayer Man can be trusted. If you zoom into the triangulated model of Prayer Man, you may see that his hands are just exposed to the sunlight while the rest of his body (except the left knee) is in the shadow.  

 

 

for_sandy.png?w=768&h=388

 

And one more which is closer to Darnell's view angle.

for_sandy_perspective.png

 

Edited by Andrej Stancak
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10 hours ago, Robin Unger said:

Andrej.

Why is Prayerman's knee bent. ?

Why isn't he standing upright like everyone else. ?

Robin:

Interesting questions. I may not be able to answer why is Prayer Man standing  with his left leg bent, however, I can offer answers to the following two questions :

Is there any evidence in Darnell's stills that Prayer Man had his left leg bent in the knee joint?

Did Lee Harvey Oswald,  one of the candidates for being Prayer Man, have a natural habit of placing his body weight on his right foot and pushing his left foot forwards?

I need to prepare several graphics files to answer these questions which I can do in few days time.

In absence of ready-made graphics I can offer a bit of thought analysis: if Prayer man stood upright with both his legs straight and close to each other (as other people did), he could only stand with both his feet either on the top landing or on the step below (second step). In case of standing on the top landing, he could not measure 5'9''. In such a case, Prayer Man would be about 5'1''-5'2'' to compensate for the height of one step (about 7''). The body height of 5'2'' would allow the top of his head to be at the level of Mr. Frazier's neck/shoulder line which is evidenced in Darnell's still. However, a tiny person of 5'2'' would also have smaller arms and the arms would not be at the exact height as they are in case of a man 5'9'' standing one step below. It would be similar to taking the newly found lady in the east corner of the doorway and fitting her to Prayer Man's body. This small person would not show the same distance between her right elbow and Lovelady's head as we see in Darnell's still. Importantly, the tiny person of 5'2'' would not have her left leg bent.

In case Prayer Man stood with both his feet on the second step, the orientation of his body would not be exactly as we see in Darnell's still. The line of steps would force him to stand parallel with the plane of the glass door, and perpendicular to the western wall, very much similar to Lovelady's figure in my last post. To match the head against the door frame (which crosses Prayer Man's head), Prayer Man would need to be closer to the central railing and he would be fully lit by sunlight. 

Bending of the left leg is the essential component in Prayer Man case. It can be seen maybe better in earlier frames of Darnell when the white lady did not quite cover the leg area. I can understand that a visual analysis of this sort may be disputed because the images are blurred. However, the question can be rephrased differently: how would the particular spot, presumably covered by a bent leg, look if the leg was straight? The answer would be that we should actually see a part of the radiator, and if we do not see the radiator it is because something has obfuscated the view. Indeed, we see a small bit of radiator in Darnell's stills which is reassuring. However, thanks to Prayer Man's bent leg we see a smaller portion of radiator compared to what we would see should he stand with both his legs straight. The images are blurred and I understand that people are reluctant to say either way. Therefore, I will prepare an overlay showing what portion of the radiator would be seen if the view is unimpeded by Prayer Man's leg.

20130908-003559.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Andrej Stancak
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The blurriness of what could be the legs and waist in Prayer Man's figure may also be related to the type of clothing he wore. This is the clothes which Lee Harvey Oswald wore on the morning of the assassination, confirmed by Marina Oswald's testimony. Mr. Frazier also mentioned in his Clay Shaw testimony that Lee Oswald wore a worker type of clothes which people would not be worried about if it got damaged.

oswaldcloths2.jpg

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