Oswald Leaving TSBD?

[Robert Prudhomme]

It might be helpful at this point to note there are several component discussions in this thread.

The first two focus on the figure seen in Weigman and Darnell:

1. Identifying Prayer Man

2. The light “reflection” area by PM’s hands: Is PM holding something?

Several other discussions have evolved from the implications of Oswald as Prayer Man:

3. Oswald seen in the small Storage room in the front Lobby

4. Oswald/Truly/Baker encounter in the entrance or 1^st floor lobby

5. Oswald/Truly/Baker encounter in the 2^nd floor Lunchroom area

6. Oswald 2^nd floor encounter with Mrs. Reid

7. Baker encounter with suspect on 4^th floor (from his first day affidavit)

8. Baker stairs/ or elevator/ or combination to the roof

9. Oswald leaving the TSBD (from the title of the thread)

Thank you for the breakdown, Richard. This is a fascinating thread, and I, for one, am looking at old material in a totally new way; thanks to you gentlemen.

[Pat Speer]

FWIW, the Fritz document posted by Sean was not written up on the 22nd, but at a later point. It says Doughty turned the evidence over to the FBI, for example, which didn't happen till 11:30 or so. More significantly, it says the defendant is deceased.

This is important because it also says Day lifted prints from the rifle. There is NO record of this lift within the DPD's files from the 22nd. There's a record of a bag and a coke bottle being submitted for fingerprinting, but no record or notes regarding Day's fingerprinting the rifle.

It seems possible they were disappeared...

[Sean Murphy]

It might be helpful at this point to note there are several component discussions in this thread.

The first two focus on the figure seen in Weigman and Darnell:

1. Identifying Prayer Man

2. The light “reflection” area by PM’s hands: Is PM holding something?

Several other discussions have evolved from the implications of Oswald as Prayer Man:

3. Oswald seen in the small Storage room in the front Lobby

4. Oswald/Truly/Baker encounter in the entrance or 1^st floor lobby

5. Oswald/Truly/Baker encounter in the 2^nd floor Lunchroom area

6. Oswald 2^nd floor encounter with Mrs. Reid

7. Baker encounter with suspect on 4^th floor (from his first day affidavit)

8. Baker stairs/ or elevator/ or combination to the roof

9. Oswald leaving the TSBD (from the title of the thread)

Fine breakdown, Richard, thank you.

It would be nice to be able to separate out the Prayer Man discussion from the Baker-Oswald-Truly discussion and treat them as separate issues.

It's damn hard to do so when we have those Darnell frames showing Baker, Prayer Man and Truly all in the same shot and all about to be brought into close proximity!

I would also argue that Prayer Man may be giving us the key to what really happened with the shifting rear stairway/lunchroom story.

[Sean Murphy]

FWIW, the Fritz document posted by Sean was not written up on the 22nd, but at a later point. It says Doughty turned the evidence over to the FBI, for example, which didn't happen till 11:30 or so. More significantly, it says the defendant is deceased.

This is important because it also says Day lifted prints from the rifle. There is NO record of this lift within the DPD's files from the 22nd. There's a record of a bag and a coke bottle being submitted for fingerprinting, but no record or notes regarding Day's fingerprinting the rifle.

It seems possible they were disappeared...

You're quite right, Pat, good catch.

This actually makes this Case Report an even more important document, for it confirms what Fritz's 12/23/63 report to Jesse Curry is already telling us: Fritz was clueless that a second-floor lunchroom story had supplanted the story told in Baker's 11/22 affidavit.

Jesse Curry, by contrast, was talking about the lunchroom incident already by the Saturday ("He was sitting in the lunchroom and one of my officers drew a weapon on him").

[Sean Murphy]

If you had a suspect for the shooting of President Kennedy in front of you and had just one question to ask him, that question would surely be:

Where exactly were you at the time of the shooting?

Yet, as we have already seen, there is a remarkable silence in the interrogation reports when it comes to telling us how Oswald actually answered this question.

All we are told is that he claimed to have been on the first floor when the President passed the building.

That's it. "On the first floor". Could be anywhere on the first floor.

I submit that this striking vagueness is indicative not of Oswald's refusal to give specifics but of the 'investigating' authorities' wise refusal to allow his all too specific answer be entered into the official record.

For that answer was a disastrous one: I was out front having my lunch at that time.

**

There is, curiously, only one interrogation report that actually goes so far as to claim that Oswald explicitly admitted to not having watched the motorcade.

That report is titled "First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald".

It is written by Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley.

Here's the sentence that is meant to break the hearts of anyone daring to claim that Oswald was indeed out front:

I asked him if he viewed the parade and he said he had not.

Game over for those longing to cry, Stop the lies, Oswald outside!

Right?

Wrong.

Here's that devastating sentence in context in Kelley's report:

At this time Captain Fritz showed a Selective Service Card that was taken out of his wallet which bore the name of Alex Hidell. Oswald refused to discuss this after being asked for an explanation of it, both by Fritz and by James Bookhout, the FBI Agent. I asked him if he viewed the parade and he said he had not. I then asked him if he had shot the President and he said he had not. I asked him if he has shot governor Connally and he said he had not.

The content of the sentence in green is clearly reflected in rough notes jotted down during the interrogation.

The content of the sentence in blue is clearly reflected in rough notes jotted down during the interrogation.

The content of the sentence in purple is clearly reflected in rough notes jotted down during the interrogation.

The sentence in red is not however reflected in any way in rough notes jotted down during the interrogation.

How do we know this? Kelley's notes have never seen the light of day, have they? Didn't he destroy them after using them to write up his report?

Correct.

And yet... even though we don't have Kelley's notes anymore, we do have access to the notes of someone else who was listening closely to Oswald's answers during the exact same moments of that interrogation session.

Who was that someone else?

Does this look familiar to anyone?

That's right--it's Captain Fritz's handwriting.

But these are not, contrary to myth, Captain Fritz's contemporaneous interrogation notes.

They are, like all five pages of the much-ballyhooed 'Fritz notes', in reality a transcription of the contemporaneous interrogation notes of FBI Special Agent James W. Bookhout.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Sean Murphy]

Getting back to the elevator question...

Truly and Baker never ran up the rear stairway.

They ran to the rear of the first floor, pressed the button for the west elevator and--it came down.

It did this because, just minutes before, James Jarman and Harold Norman had taken the trouble to push the gate down on it after getting out on the fifth floor to watch the motorcade.

There was no shouting up the shaft from Truly, no ringing of the bell, just a press of the button and the cables started moving immediately.

We can now understand why Truly and Baker would later claim not to have got on an elevator until the fifth floor: the authorities badly needed an Oswald sighting on the escape route. This meant switching the journey up to the stairway and concocting a cock and bull story of the west elevator being 'stuck' up on the fifth floor.

**

But why did Truly testify that he and Baker then took the east elevator from the fifth floor to the seventh?

Why, if the story is a fabrication, don't they just say they came off the stairs onto the fifth floor landing and took the elevator they had in reality been on the whole time--i.e. the nearest elevator, the west elevator?

Why say that that elevator was gone by the time they reached the fifth floor, leaving only the east elevator available?

Why complicate the story in such an unnecessary fashion?

**

Actually the switch over to the east elevator was far from unnecessary.

It was, from the point of view of the 'investigating' authorities, absolutely critical if they were to keep alive the notion of Oswald's sole guilt.

For it was pretty apparent early on to those who were in the know about Baker and Truly's elevator ride up from the first floor that the assassin(s) had descended from the sixth floor using the east elevator.

**

Again we have Bonnie Ray Williams to thank for this information.

For the day after the assassination he finally brought himself to admit what he had held back in his previous day's affidavit:

that he had visited the sixth floor on his own shortly before the assassination and had joined his two friends on the fifth floor by coming down the stairs in the west rear corner of the building.

And he makes a remark that tells us in plain English just how easy it was for the shooter(s) to escape using the east elevator which was still up on the sixth floor (click to enlarge):

**

But if Truly and Baker were responsible for the movements of the west elevator just after the assassination, where does that leave Jack Dougherty, the man who testified to having brought it down?

We still need to talk about Jack.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[J. Raymond Carroll]

If you had a suspect for the shooting of President Kennedy in front of you and had just one question to ask him, that question would surely be:

Where exactly were you at the time of the shooting?

Yet, as we have already seen, there is a remarkable silence in the interrogation reports when it comes to telling us how Oswald actually answered this question.

All we are told is that he claimed to have been on the first floor when the President passed the building.

That's it. "On the first floor". Could be anywhere on the first floor.

Quit kidding yourself Sean me young lad!

Fritz's hidden notes

were hid for a reason:

They show that Prayer Man

was out front with Bill Shelley.

Rivers in Egypt

please help me

[Sean Murphy]

Does this look familiar to anyone?

That's right--it's Captain Fritz's handwriting.

But these are not, contrary to myth, Captain Fritz's contemporaneous interrogation notes.

They are, like all five pages of the much-ballyhooed 'Fritz notes', in reality a transcription of the contemporaneous interrogation notes of FBI Special Agent James W. Bookhout.

The same document 'First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald' contains another example of how SS Inspector Thomas Kelley seems to have strategically distorted key statements made by Oswald in custody:

He said he ate his lunch with the colored boys who worked with him. He described one of them as "Junior," a colored boy, and the other was little short negro boy. He said his lunch consisted of cheese, fruit, and apples, and was the only package he had with him when he went to work.

This 'claim' was put to Jarman ("Junior") and Norman (the "little short negro") and of course they answered that no, they hadn't had lunch with Oswald.

But did Oswald ever make such a claim in the first place?

Here's Fritz's transcription of the original note made by FBI Special Agent Bookhout as he was actually listening to Oswald's actual words:

Says 11-2[2]-63 sa[w] two negr[oes] come in

one Jr. - & short negro -. ask ? [what] for lunch says cheese

sandwiches & apple

From "saw two negroes come in" to "ate his lunch with the colored boys": way to make a xxxx out of Oswald, Inspector.

Note that Bookhout himself is not without sin in this regard.

His report will also badly muddle the sense of what Oswald said:

"saw two negroes come in" gets turned into "recalled possibly two Negro employees walking through the room".

**

Having the actual wording of Bookhout's original rough notes, thanks to Fritz's copying of those notes, gives us the precious ability to identify with some confidence what Oswald was actually telling Fritz: I saw Junior and the short negro come in [to the first floor via the back entrance]

Oswald, in other words, is handing Fritz proof that he was indeed on the first floor (probably in or around the domino room) when Jarman and Norman reentered the building and made their way up to the fifth floor.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Oswald, in other words, is handing Fritz proof that he was indeed on the first floor (probably in or around the domino room) when Jarman and Norman reentered the building and made their way up to the fifth floor.

Duh!

Then he went outside,

out with Bill Shelley in front

to watch his fearless leader go by!

[Mark Knight]

On the night of 11/22, Captain Fritz files a Case Report on Oswald (click to enlarge):

Page 2 of the report lists the roles played that day by key witnesses from law enforcement:

Top of the list is this:

The claim underlined is of course a brazen lie: Baker hasn't identified Oswald in any lineup.

If he has attended one, he must have done a Brennan and refused to make an identification.

All this lie does is draw our attention to the weird failure of the affidavit (to which the reader is being pointed here) to offer any link between the 'employee' confronted in the Depository building and Oswald.

But the placing of Baker's name at the very top of this document indicates just how central a role Fritz already envisages for him in the mounting of a case against Oswald.

If Baker, as we have reason to believe, is proving a less tractable witness than Fritz needs, that will be work for another day.

For now, what counts is that Fritz has in the bank a damning affidavit supplemented by a lie compensating for what the affidavit so pointedly omits to mention: Baker's recognising of Oswald as Mr. Third or Fourth Floor Walking Away From The Stairway.

**

But Mr. Third or Fourth Floor Walking Away From The Stairway is himself a pure fiction, as are the circumstances of Baker's first sighting of him:

As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to the man and he turned around and came back toward me.[/size]

To explain the relationship between the scene painted by the words above and the very different little scene enacted below--

--is to explain how the fix against Oswald was put in.

It is, in a nutshell, a A Tale of Two Fictions being mongrelised into a Third:

Nevermind...I just saw Pat Speer's post.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Mark Knight

[J. Raymond Carroll]

That's right--it's Captain Fritz's handwriting.

But these are not, contrary to myth, Captain Fritz's contemporaneous interrogation notes.

They are, like all five pages of the much-ballyhooed 'Fritz notes', in reality a transcription of the contemporaneous interrogation notes of FBI Special Agent James W. Bookhout.

Please explain Sean.

[Sean Murphy]

Marrion Baker described for the WC his actions after coming down from the roof of the TSBD with Roy Truly:

Mr. BAKER - We went to the, I believe it would be the first floor there.

Mr. BELIN - All right. You got off the elevator then?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Did you leave Mr. Truly or did you stay with him?

Mr. BAKER - I left Mr. Truly there.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?

Mr. BAKER - I immediately went on out. I was with this motorcade and I went right on straight through the front door and got on my motorcycle and tried to find out what happened to the motorcade.

It's a little surprising, in the light of the above account, to find footage of Baker standing in conversation with Truly and several others on the first floor:

Of course it's possible, contrary to the impression that Baker gives, that he did briefly engage with some people in Truly's company before heading out.

But it's not what one would expect from his account.

Is it at all possible that this footage is not from Alyea's 11/22/63 film but from 3/20/64, the day of the WC time trial when Baker and Truly reconvened at the Depository?

If so, might this man in the Baker/Truly footage--

--be the same man we see here during a visit to Dallas by WC members in May 64?

Edited September 4, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Sean Murphy]

Getting back to the elevator question...

Truly and Baker never ran up the rear stairway.

They ran to the rear of the first floor, pressed the button for the west elevator and--it came down.

It did this because, just minutes before, James Jarman and Harold Norman had taken the trouble to push the gate down on it after getting out on the fifth floor to watch the motorcade.

There was no shouting up the shaft from Truly, no ringing of the bell, just a press of the button and the cables started moving immediately.

We can now understand why Truly and Baker would later claim not to have got on an elevator until the fifth floor: the authorities badly needed an Oswald sighting on the escape route. This meant switching the journey up to the stairway and concocting a cock and bull story of the west elevator being 'stuck' up on the fifth floor.

**

But why did Truly testify that he and Baker then took the east elevator from the fifth floor to the seventh?

Why, if the story is a fabrication, don't they just say they came off the stairs onto the fifth floor landing and took the elevator they had in reality been on the whole time--i.e. the nearest elevator, the west elevator?

Why say that that elevator was gone by the time they reached the fifth floor, leaving only the east elevator available?

Why complicate the story in such an unnecessary fashion?

**

Actually the switch over to the east elevator was far from unnecessary.

It was, from the point of view of the 'investigating' authorities, absolutely critical if they were to keep alive the notion of Oswald's sole guilt.

For it was pretty apparent early on to those who were in the know about Baker and Truly's elevator ride up from the first floor that the assassin(s) had descended from the sixth floor using the east elevator.

**

Roy Truly's 11/22 FBI interview says nothing about getting on a rear elevator on the fifth floor and using it to get to the seventh floor.

Marrion Baker's 11/22 affidavit says nothing about that either.

However Truly's 11/23 affidavit has this to say (click to enlarge):

... the 5th floor where we found the elevator open.

Not: we saw an elevator, or: one of the elevators was there.

But: we found the elevator open.

He can only be talking about the west elevator, the "freight elevator" to which, as he has just a few lines earlier told us, he and the officer had first gone down on the first floor.

The word 'open' is only meaningful when talking about that elevator, the elevator that shortly before had refused to come down: this is because that elevator, the west elevator, could be called remotely as long as it was not open.

Truly is giving the game away here: he is telling us that as he and the officer reached the fifth floor they discovered the reason why that elevator, the west "freight elevator", had not come down to them on the first floor: it was open.

**

Baker and Truly had in reality used the west elevator all the way up from the first floor--it had not been open, the gate had been pulled down by Jarman and Norman, making it available for others to call.

Later that day, Truly's story will undergo yet another necessary change:

they didn't find an open west elevator on the fifth floor, he noticed instead that the east passenger-operated elevator was still on the fifth floor and they ran over to that.

In fact, the east elevator was the elevator used by the assassin(s) to come down the building shortly after the assassination.

Truly and Baker had to be put on it after the event to hide this fact.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Richard Hocking]

Marrion Baker described for the WC his actions after coming down from the roof of the TSBD with Roy Truly:

Mr. BAKER - We went to the, I believe it would be the first floor there.

Mr. BELIN - All right. You got off the elevator then?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Did you leave Mr. Truly or did you stay with him?

Mr. BAKER - I left Mr. Truly there.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?

Mr. BAKER - I immediately went on out. I was with this motorcade and I went right on straight through the front door and got on my motorcycle and tried to find out what happened to the motorcade.

It's a little surprising, in the light of the above account, to find footage of Baker standing in conversation with Truly and several others on the first floor:

Of course it's possible, contrary to the impression that Baker gives, that he did briefly engage with some people in Truly's company before heading out.

But it's not what one would expect from his account.

Is it at all possible that this footage is not from Alyea's 11/22/63 film but from 3/20/64, the day of the WC time trial when Baker and Truly reconvened at the Depository?

If so, might this man in the Baker/Truly footage--

--be the same man we see here during a visit to Dallas by WC members in May 64?

Sheriff Bill Decker?

[Mark Knight]

Marrion Baker described for the WC his actions after coming down from the roof of the TSBD with Roy Truly:

Mr. BAKER - We went to the, I believe it would be the first floor there.[/size]

Mr. BELIN - All right. You got off the elevator then?[/size]

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.[/size]

Mr. BELIN - Did you leave Mr. Truly or did you stay with him?[/size]

Mr. BAKER - I left Mr. Truly there.[/size]

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?[/size]

Mr. BAKER - I immediately went on out. I was with this motorcade and I went right on straight through the front door and got on my motorcycle and tried to find out what happened to the motorcade.[/size]

It's a little surprising, in the light of the above account, to find footage of Baker standing in conversation with Truly and several others on the first floor:

Of course it's possible, contrary to the impression that Baker gives, that he did briefly engage with some people in Truly's company before heading out.

But it's not what one would expect from his account.

Is it at all possible that this footage is not from Alyea's 11/22/63 film but from 3/20/64, the day of the WC time trial when Baker and Truly reconvened at the Depository?

If so, might this man in the Baker/Truly footage--

--be the same man we see here during a visit to Dallas by WC members in May 64?

Sheriff Bill Decker?

Did WC member John Sherman Cooper, Republican Senator from Kentucky, make the trip to Dallas? From photos I've seen of Cooper with his glasses on, it appears this may be Cooper.