Prayer Man is a Man

[Sandy Larsen]

 

On 9/2/2020 at 8:35 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

Sandy:

please post or send me the piece of Darnell you would like to test and I will work on it.

 

 

 

Andrej,

Okay, see the margin between PM's left cheek and the right edge of the image? If you crop the image so that there is that much margin around all of PM's body parts of interest, that should be plenty. If that will take too long to process, use a smaller percentage of that margin width, hopefully not much less than 60 percent or so.

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Sandy Larsen

[Jonathan Cohen]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

You do know, don't you, that FBI agent Hosty's interrogation notes reveal that Oswald said he was outside watching the presidential parade?

That is what Hosty's notes appear to reflect Oswald having said. It still doesn't make any sense why Oswald HIMSELF did not repeat this information any of the umpteen times he was in earshot of reporters and journalists in the Dallas jail after his arrest. This information would have been disseminated around the world in a matter of moments and would have instantly changed the narrative about the suspect and the shooting. Further, why didn't he tell his family members this when they came to visit him?

[Andrew Prutsok]

22 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

 

Andrew,

You do know, don't you, that FBI agent Hosty's interrogation notes reveal that Oswald said he was outside watching the presidential parade? That's a fairly recent find that Bart Kamp posted here several months ago. (Time goes by so fast for me now that I don't recall if it was posted last year or early this year.)

 

I do. Sorry if I did not make that clear in my post. What also attests to Oswald claiming to be out front is the fact that officers or agents showed up at Lovelady's home the night of the assassination to have him identify himself in the Altgens photo. They were afraid it was Oswald and the photo was evidence that he was exactly where he claimed to be during the shooting.

[Sandy Larsen]

 

On 9/4/2020 at 11:36 AM, Andrew Prutsok said:

What also attests to Oswald claiming to be out front is the fact that officers or agents showed up at Lovelady's home the night of the assassination to have him identify himself in the Altgens photo.

 

Oh yeah, good point! I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

On 9/4/2020 at 1:36 PM, Andrew Prutsok said:

They were afraid it was Oswald and the photo was evidence that he was exactly where he claimed to be during the shooting.

They were afraid? According to who? Does EVERYTHING have to have a conspiratorial explanation? Why is it so hard to accept that agents would have wanted to identify EVERYONE in the building doorway in Altgens 6?

[Andrew Prutsok]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

They were afraid? According to who? Does EVERYTHING have to have a conspiratorial explanation? Why is it so hard to accept that agents would have wanted to identify EVERYONE in the building doorway in Altgens 6?

So why else would they show up at Billy Lovelady’s home the very night of the assassination? They were scared xxxxless.

[Denis Morissette]

On 9/2/2020 at 10:35 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

Sandy:

please post or send me the piece of Darnell you would like to test and I will work on it.

The image resolution is an important aspect in any analysis, however, I guess, some details can be seen in spite of comparatively low resolution. It is as if Prayer Man's figure would be sampled with a grid of about 1 cm or slightly less.  Some very fine features will not be seen but aspects such as hairline can be seen even with this low resolution. A good interpolation during resampling does not add any new information to the image but helps to perceive the contours of known objects because our mind understands that there should be a linear continuum between two grid points on an object.

Here is the frame I used to cut Prayer Man's figure. The size of the image is 654 x 450 pixels which is a fairly sized photograph. Please indicate the region you would like to use in the analysis and I can cut it from a TIF version of this image (for Internet posting, most platforms ask for a JPEG which entails some loss of information.)

 

Can you work on this color photo taken about 20 minutes after the shooting?

[Andrej Stancak]

6 hours ago, Denis Morissette said:

Can you work on this color photo taken about 20 minutes after the shooting?

Dennis:

I work in the photograph in the middle (Darnell) as I believe that it offers cues allowing to check if this person could be Lee Harvey Oswald. The lady with the camera does not seem to be, in my opinion, a suitable candidate for Prayer Man because Prayer Man has a male type baldness (an initial stage called Type II) whereas the photo in the left panel shows a woman. The photograph in the right hand panel appears to show a partial view of a person who could be the old lady seen in Martin film or someone else.  

[Andrej Stancak]

To follow up on the problem of shirt CE151, the maroon shirt with button-up collar, here is a preliminary analysis of the Darnell still using a method similar to Tom Wilson's method. Briefly, a very large copy of Darnell doorway (45 x 60 cm) made on a heavy matte paper is photographed using a near-infrared sensitive camera (Basler Ace2) in the light spectrum including invisible light (>780 nm) and registered at 12-bit resolution. During the recording, the photograph is being excited using 10 Hz flashes produced by a xenon bulb. Images are recorded at 30 Hz. The whole purpose is to excite the photograph to include both reflected and scattered light that is visible in near-infrared or infrared band in hope to extract some more information. As I am pursuing the shapes and distributions of the dark spots on Prayer Man's shirt, extracting more information about the gradation of dark tones (those are getting warmer when illuminated and could therefore stand up from the background in near-infrared light spectrum) using this approach appears promising.

The work is ongoing and I still do not understand all aspects of the method as I would like to (and did not test all possible variations of the method), therefore, I decided to show at least some intermediate images before this mammoth project is eventually completed.

 

In the composite above, the top left panel is an average of a 40-second recording (1200 images) that is used as an input for ImageJ analysis (top right). The "original" picture already shows some interesting features, such as much better separation of Prayer Man's figure from the background, especially on the left side of his body. The 3D scaled image (top right) shows the contours of Prayer Man body even better. His hairline and dark hair are visible quite clearly. The middle panel is the CE151, the one which is contained in Warren Commission Exhibits. it was converted into grey scale and the contrasts were enhanced. 

There are quite large dark spots on the right front facing on CE151, and one triangular spot in the lower left part of the front facing. I have highlighted a spot on Prayer Man's shirt which I believe could be at identical location as in CE151. Further, the spot appears to be bent to the front and left as if the shirt was following the extended left thigh. 

The comparison of the dark spots on shirt CE151 and the spots on Prayer Man's shirt is not trivial as Prayer Man is standing parallel to the western wall and therefore, we cannot see the shirt face as a flat surface, it is rounded and vanishing as the shirt is wrapped around the trunk. One of the next steps will be preparing the copy of CE151 (basically, to modify a shirt which is already quite similar to CE151), and create all folds and dark spots as in original CE151 and use that shirt to photograph Prayer Man under the conditions similar to Darnell's still.

 

Late edit: the composite picture below highlights in the lower panels the similarity between the large dark spots on Prayer Man's shirt and on shirt CE151. Of course, it is difficult to evaluate how accurately would the shapes of the spots in both shirts match because of folds in shirt CE151, flat vs. convex surface in CE151 and Prayer Man's shirt, and the slightly different relationships between left and right front facings in both shirts (due to the lower one or two buttons missing, there was considerable freedom in how exactly were the lower parts of the shirt aligned). 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Andrej Stancak

[Andrej Stancak]

While still waiting for the opportunity to carry out the shirt analysis to check if the dark spots seen on Prayer Man's shirt would match those visible on Lee Oswald's shirt CE150, I decided to contemplate  Prayer Man's body language. Here is the full article for those who are interested:

https://thejfktruthmatters.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/what-does-prayer-mans-body-language-tell-us-about-his-state-of-mind/

Briefly, the Darnell still viewed as a 3D reconstruction reveals the following features in Prayer Man's figure: 1. His incompletely crossed arms. 2. His closed hands (clenched fists?). 3. Head tilted slightly to the right. 4. Prayer Man's left leg bent in the knee joint and the left foot forward; the left foot orientated to the east and south. 5. His right foot holds the weight of the body and it is orientated toward east and south. 6. Prayer Man's gaze directed toward the east and south, in general direction of the intersection of Elm and Houston Street.

I checked two books on interpretation of body language which include head postures, hand and arm postures and the stance.

The body language analysis suggests that Prayer Man behaved defensively, felt vulnerable and was thoughtful. His gaze and feet pointed to the direction where his mind wanted to go - to leave the assassination scene in direction of East Elm Street.

Prayer Man's state of mind revealed by body language analysis appears to match Lee Oswald's movements after the shooting very well. There is no other explanation for Lee Oswald's precocious leaving the Depository than that he felt vulnerable, under a threat and defensive. Lee Oswald was a political man and it would fit much better his interest in politics to stay at the scene and learn as much as possible about the tragic event of historic significance. 

Lee Oswald was last seen after the shooting by Buell Wesley Frazier. Mr. Frazier claimed to have seen him leaving in direction of Elm after coming from the direction of north Houston Street. It seems that Prayer Man had been contemplating the same while he was standing in the doorway, gazing in the direction of Elm/Houston and standing in a foot-forward posture (so typical of Lee Oswald) with his lead foot pointing in the same direction.   

 

Edited November 30, 2020 by Andrej Stancak

[Andrej Stancak]

Interestingly, our own researchers have initially considered the figure of Prayer Man as possibly Lee Oswald leaving the TSBD. Hence, the title of the Forum's most viewed and commented thread:

  

While the idea that Lee Oswald as Prayer Man would leave the doorway right away without returning to the building would hardly fare, Prayer Man's figure appears to have made an impression as someone leaving the building, which is something Prayer Man's body language indicates.

 

[Andrej Stancak]

Sandra Styles was interviewed by authors Zachry and Peterson for their book: The Lone Star Speaks: Untold Texas Stories about JFK Assassination" on July 3 and 12, 2016 (Chapter 27).

The quotes below denote an authentic statement by Mrs. Styles:

Styles recalled years later: “The workers [like Oswald] all wore jeans and work shirts with their shirt sleeves rolled up. Some would wear khakis or other kinds of work pants.”

I have underlined the most relevant part of Styles' statement. So, Oswald was a worker and he wore a shirt with sleeves rolled up. Let us check how Prayer Man would match a description of a "worker" such as an order filler handling book boxes.

Here is a zoomed view of Prayer Man with yellow line spanning the length of his bare forearm due to the shirt sleeve being rolled up and the purple line highlighting approximate transition from bare forearm to shirt.

 

The shirt CE150 shows striations on the right sleeve due to sequencing of darker and lighter strips with more proximal dark strips being darker than the distal dark strips. This would be consistent with the sleeve being rolled up at variable heights; the distal parts of the sleeve would be almost always folded and therefore less likely to be covered with dirt. The part of the sleeve at elbow region would be almost always exposed to the dirt such as dust or black ink from the inscriptions on cardboard boxes. In the picture below, the light strips are delineated with yellow rectangles and dark strips with black rectangles. The picture of the shirt CE150 was darkened to visualise the striations better.

 

Of course, the fact that Prayer Man had his shirt sleeves rolled up does not prove that Lee Oswald was Prayer Man. However, it is another important match between Prayer Man and a description of a Depository worker by an eye witness, and possibly a match with the shirt CE150.

Why do we not see just one feature in Prayer Man's appearance that would not match Lee Oswald?

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Andrej Stancak

[John Butler]

On 9/7/2020 at 1:48 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

Dennis:

I work in the photograph in the middle (Darnell) as I believe that it offers cues allowing to check if this person could be Lee Harvey Oswald. The lady with the camera does not seem to be, in my opinion, a suitable candidate for Prayer Man because Prayer Man has a male type baldness (an initial stage called Type II) whereas the photo in the left panel shows a woman. The photograph in the right hand panel appears to show a partial view of a person who could be the old lady seen in Martin film or someone else.  

Andrej,

Would you say Oswald has a Type II hair pattern based on the following;

In the Dallas photo Oswald is using a comb over to hide the pattern of baldness in the hunting photo taken by brother Robert.

And, just to through in a little controversy, here is a photo of Oswald without a comb over.

in need of a comb over before he goes to Russia, but doesn't need one when he meets Marina.

And, then redevelops a need for a comb over after about a year of marriage.

Strange, isn't it?

I believe that hair pattern of Prayer Man can be explained as the same as Oswald's.

 

 

 

Edited January 11, 2021 by John Butler

[Andrej Stancak]

John:

agreed. Both Prayer Man and Lee Oswald had hairline patterns of the same category - Type II according to Norwood's classification of male baldness patterns (Norwood, O.T., Male pattern baldness: Classification and incidence. Southern Medical Journal, 11: 1359-1365, 1975).

[Adam Johnson]

I will throw another issue at you guys other then hair to consider.

In the photo in Minsk above and the photo in the US with Marina and the new baby LHO has a watch on his left wrist.

Prayer Man has a watch on the right wrist or a large bracelet or some other large light reflecting piece or pieces of jewellery.

Not something you would wear while at work lifting, stacking and moving boxes.

The piece of jewellery also appears to me to be a lot larger then a single silver Marine I.D bracelet for those ready to suggest thats what it is.

Regards Adam.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Adam Johnson