Prayer Man is a Man

[Chris Davidson]

On 5/22/2019 at 4:56 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

Chris:

thanks for your explanations. The tonal values of objects in black-and-white photographs taken by different cameras and film materials are not comparable. There is no point in comparing a white helmet in a shadow with a human skin exposed to sunlight.

The body height problem: if you think Prayer Man was 5'6'' and was standing further back on the top landing, you would face the problem of comparing his 5'6' with Mr. Frazier's 6'. This would put the level of Prayer Man head (the top) to about the root of the nose in Frazier's figure. This is not the case. If you place Prayer Man closer toward the aluminium frame, his right elbow will be hopelessly far from the head of the man standing on the second step.

I have done very little modelling with Wiegman film and cannot comment on all details of Prayer Man's location and body posture yet. However, it appears that he stood in much the same way as in Darnell, however, he was rotated slightly more to his right and may also be shifted an inch or two closer to the western wall. I would see nothing strange in seeing such minor differences in Prayer Man's posture between Wiegman and Darnell.

 

 

 

Yet, coincidentally, they are approx the same tonal values.

I didn't say I thought Prayer Person was 5'4" / 5'6" tall.

Chris's quote: "I gave two different heights for the Darnell person, one which doesn’t fit a person who is 5’4”/5”6” tall unless that person was standing a certain distance back from the landing edge. Imo"

That was in reference to somebody else making a determination of Prayer Persons height at 5'4"/5'6".

It is what I thought would occur if a 63" object was a few feet back from the landing edge, but photographically

The effect from a 25mm lens on the height of Prayer Person at those distances is minuscule.

The two photographic heights I arrived at (63 pixels for Prayer Person)(73 pixels for Frazier)(work previously provided) place Prayer Person on the approx top edge of the landing (in complete shadow) and Frazier's relationship to that location.

 

 

[Chris Davidson]

On 5/20/2019 at 4:05 PM, Chris Davidson said:

My guess for the camera that was used:

[Chris Davidson]

The same distance to both figures when plotted would look like this:

It places Frazier approx 1.56ft back from the landing edge.

 

[Chris Davidson]

Thanks to Ray for the stair height info.

Add 6 inches for the curb + 50"(stairs) + 73"(Fraziers height) = 129" / 12 = 10.75ft.

Height of the camera when the film was taken approx 6.72ft above the ground (Darnell sitting atop the back seat of a convertible I assume).

The calculator gives the base distance in nautical miles, I'just converted it for you.

You can compare that to the previous postings calculator if so desired.

 

 

[Andrej Stancak]

Chris:

It looks like your location for Buell Wesley Frazier in Darnell is similar or the same as it is in my model. Please see the overhead view in my lengthy  post with a number of pictures. Frazier's figure cannot ber too close or too far from the edge of the top landing because the shadow crossing his left shoulder would change. Actually, I can move his figure neither to the right or left by a single inch, and nor can I move it front or back (the shadow problem). The same with Prayer Man. If I would move him one inch to the right, he would step out of the shadow and his belly would be lit by the sunlight. If I move him to the left, his head would not be aligned with the vertical pole of the aluminum frame. If I push him backward (toward the glass door), his right foot will be buried in the concrete of the top landing and his right elbow will be too far from the head of the man on the second step. And if I push him to the front, a large part of his body will be in the sunlight. It is that tight and that sensitive to deviations from one ideal location.

Edited May 23, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Chris Davidson]

On 5/21/2019 at 3:51 PM, Chris Davidson said:

 

If you paid attention to what I have previously said, I stated my Wiegman enhancements look like a woman. I still stick by that. I do not and have never hinged my so-called research reputation on those enhancements. If it’s Oswald, fine. If it’s not, fine. If it’s two different people, fine.

In fact, way back when this first started, I hinted the Darnell prayer person looks more male than female.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I think that it’s Oswald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I remain gender neutral on the identity of Prayer Person/s, I'm just not willing to exclude everyone but Oswald.

Do I believe Oswald was shooting from the 6th floor, no, never have, as my research has always dictated.

This doesn't therefore mean if Oswald isn't Prayer Person, it proves he was shooting.

There are other people that appeared similar in profile to Oswald near the confines of the TBSD.

If I made an error in the math, I will stand corrected.

As of now, I'm convinced by the math that the Prayer Person figure in Darnell is 63 inches tall.

 

 

 

[Andrej Stancak]

Chris:

I reckon that your 5'3'' and my 5'2 4/8 for the height of the top of Prayer Man's head above the top landing are pretty close estimates, aren't they?  

I would like to turn your attention to the problem of body proportions which your excellent math may have not taken into account yet. It refers to the problem of how close Prayer Man's right elbow was relative to the head of the person on the second step. Of course, this man was some 3-4 steps away from Prayer Man but what matters are the 2D projections of his and Prayer Man's figures. I get the exact location of the right elbow relative to that man's head only if Prayer Man stands with his right foot on the second step, but not if Prayer Man is a short person 5' 2'' 4/8 (or your 5'3'', it does not matter in this case). A man 5'2'' or 5'3'' standing on the top landing will not have his arms at the same height as a man reaching with his head to the same height but standing one step below. I have explained this detail in my yesterday post, the one with 5-6 images. This means, that his right elbow of the short Prayer Man standing on the top landing will be too far from the man's head due to the combination of three factors: 1. The short Prayer Man is farther away from that man compared to the tall Prayer Man, 2. The arms of the short Prayer Man will also be 2 inches higher compared to the tall Prayer Man even if their heads reach the same heights, 3. A short person will also have shorter arms than a tall person, which moves the right elbow further from the man on the lower step. I showed an example with Mrs. Stanton in my previous post who was set to 5'5'' (this is because some people were adamant that Mrs. Stanton was 5'5'' last year and only changed their mind after seeing that that's too much and simply started to claim that she was 5'4''). You can see the big gap between Mrs. Stanton's mannequin and the location of Prayer Man's elbow.

I hope you find my explanation for my preferred Prayer Man's posture with one foot on a lower step reasonable.

Late edit: Chris, would you agree that a person 5' 9 1/2'' would hardly be a woman?

 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Chris Davidson]

Andrej,

I tried to take the photographic frame out of the equation by recommending the correct aspect ratio and angle to horizon adjustment.

Camera information and trigonometry for the rest.

The only height that's known is Fraziers.

Body proportions are all variables just as in the head height graphic you supplied previously.

I never said I found your "one foot on a lower step theory" unreasonable.

If I had, I would never had try to reproduce it with my own experiment. Although that turned out to be worthless in this instance.

We don't agree on the object/hand being in or out of shadow. 

So you're not going to convince me about other shadows.

If there is an egregious mistake with my math/information then someone will correct it and maybe I'll change my opinion.

Present your case to those that are more knowledgeable in Photogrammetry than I am.

I've spent more time than I anticipated on this.

Break time!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Andrej Stancak]

Chris:

break time is a good thing.

A 3D problem such as the location of a human body in a specific posture in a space cannot be solved by drawing lines on an inaccurate 2D plan of the doorway. Your red line pointing to Prayer Man is wrong - his head would not be crossed by the aluminum frame. Sorry. You would need to move him closer toward the centre so that the line would at least cross the back corner of the top landing. If you would then plot the shadow line (your shadow line) and also figure out the orientation of the body and hands as they really are, maybe you would start seeing it as Darnell shows it.

Edited May 23, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Pat Speer]

Re Frazier. To my recollection, his reasoning is this--he doesn't remember seeing Oswald on the front steps before or after the shooting. Period. From looking at the images of himself on the steps by prayer person, he believes he would have observed this person and have remembered if this person was Oswald. He therefore concludes this person was not Oswald. 

This is a logical deduction.

I mean, think about it. Someone shows you a 50- year-old picture of yourself standing by a woman at a wedding. Someone asks you if that person was your wife. You say "no" even though that person bears a slight resemblance to your wife. Why? Because you have a clear recollection that the wedding was your best friend's wedding and your wife hated your best friend and didn't attend the wedding. 

Memories of circumstance inform photo identification. I mean, seriously. If someone showed me a picture of someone who looks like myself dancing with Madonna, I would have no problem saying it wasn't me because I never danced with Madonna (I once danced with Charo, but that's another story). You can extend this, moreover, to people other than yourself. If someone showed you a picture of someone who looked like your brother in the background of a photo of you playing basketball in high school, you could say no that's not him if you had a clear recollection that your brother never once came to see you playing basketball. 

Frazier says prayer person isn't Oswald. Could he be mistaken? Of course. But his assurance that it isn't Oswald is undeniably problematic for the Prayer Man faithful. 

Why? Well, think about it. Let's say one of us was able to get the attention of a TV producer, who was interested in the Prayer Man theory. And he decided to make a show about it, in which the photos were shown to Frazier. And Frazier said "Nope, it's not him."

No network would broadcast that show.

(Now, it's always possible a show would be broadcast, but only if the producer deliberately disguised Frazier's denial in order to make it look like an acknowledgement. This is, in fact, what happened with The Lost Bullet. Witness after witness after witness was brought forward in support of Max Holland's theories, and witness after witness after witness shot down his theories, only to have the producers of the program pretend they were supporting his theories.) 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Pat Speer

[Andrej Stancak]

Pat:

thanks for your detailed comments on Mr. Frazier's memory recollection. The situation you describe when a pre-knowledge determines the memory outcome is understandable and it certainly does not help to the possibility of Lee Oswald being Prayer Man. Mr. Frazier's positive identification of Prayer Man would solve the problem of Prayer Man identity. 

Late edit: the thing is that Mr. Frazier built his rejection of  Lee Oswald based on a recall of time samples from before and after the shooting. However, he may have not noticed him as Lee would be out for maybe 35 seconds and in the most dramatic period when people stood in shock. Thus, Mr. Frazier created a memory trace going throughout the whole period to reject Lee Oswald's presence in the doorway but he may have missed a short period.

However, Mr. Frazier's memory traces as far as Lee Oswald is concerned are at least problematic. The most blatant case are his statements for the Warren Commission in which he said that he returned into the building right after a girl who was passing by told them about the shooting:

Mr. BALL - Then you went back into the Building, did you? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Right. 
Mr. BALL - And before you went back into the Building no police officer came up the steps and into the building? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Not that I know. They could walk by the way and I was standing there talking to somebody else and didn't see it. 
Mr. BALL - Did anybody say anything about what had happened, did you hear anybody say anything about the President had been shot? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Yes, sir; right before I went back, some girl who had walked down a little bit further where I was standing on the steps, and somebody come back and said somebody had shot President Kennedy. 
Mr. BALL - Do you know who it was who told you that? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Sir? 
Mr. BALL - Do you know who the girl was who told you that? 
Mr. FRAZIER - She didn't tell me right directly but she just came back and more or less in a low kind of hollering she just told several people. 
Mr. BALL - Then you went back into the Building, did you? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Right. 
Mr. BALL - And police officers came in there? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Yes, sir; I would say by the time, you know some of us went back in, and it wasn't just a few minutes, I say there were several. 
Mr. BALL - Did you stay on the first floor? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Well, stayed on the first floor there for a few minutes and I hadn't eaten my lunch so I had my lunch down there in the basement and I went down there to get my lunch and eat it and I walked back up on the first floor there. 
Mr. BALL - When you came back into the Building, you came in the front door, didn't you? 
Mr. FRAZIER - Right 
Mr. BALL - Did you go down to the basement immediately or did you stand around on the first floor? 
Mr. FRAZIER - No, sir; I stood around for several minutes there, you know, and then, you know, eventually the ones who hadn't eaten their lunch, some of them had taken their lunch outside. 
 

However, from about 2002, Mr. Frazier started to tell a very different story about what happened after the shooting. This is a transcript of Mr. Frazier's interview from 2013. Alistair Bricks was able to identify an earlier interview of Mr. Frazier containing the same story as his 2013 interview:

The transcript from the "Living History with Buell Wesley Frazier" interview recorded by the Sixth Floor Museum and posted on August 27, 2013. Mr. Fagin led the interview. The interview can be found on YouTube.com by typing the title of the video broadcast.

The relevant section of the interview starts at 33 min 50 s:

Mr. Fagin: In the chaos that followed the shooting, did you see Oswald at all?

Mr. Frazier: (pause) I did. This was all... I do not know how many minutes later … (noisy recording), but the lady I stand next to. Some of the people, Bill Shelley and Mr. Billy Lovelady, they went down towards the Triple Underpass because before they went down there, a lady came by, a woman came by, she was crying and she said "Somebody has shot the President".

So we looked ...(unintelligible). And I turned to Sarah: "She said somebody shot the President", I said I doubt what she said. She said that she did say that. So we stayed there for few minutes, and, and I walked down to the first step where Billy was standing there by myself so to look around it. And it was just total chaos there.

And then forbear I started to go down if I can see Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady, and it was so much chaos down there. And I said, well, I better go back to work, go back to the steps, so now, and I did, I walked back to the bottom of the steps, and then I walked out to the corner of the building right there where Houston comes side of the building. And I was talking to someone, it  was a lady, and I looked to my left, and come walking alone the side of the Texas School Book  building was Lee Oswald.

Mr. Fagin: walking along this side of the building?

Mr. Frazier: Yes.

Mr. Fagin: Houston Street.

Mr. Frazier. Yes, Houston Street. So, he'd come around after the dock there. So, he walks up and I talked to this lady. He didn't say anything. And he crosses Houston. I watch him crossing Houston as I talked to this little lady. and as he gets over to the other side of Houston, and then he crosses  Elm. And somebody said something to me and I turned, and he was about half-way across the street, and when I turned back he was gone in the crowd, and I don’t know what happened to him. But I did not worry too much about that because there were several places around there where you can go when you need a sandwich, and I never asked him that morning when he and I were riding to work, and I says: Where is your lunch? He said: Oh, I will buy off the truck today. I said: “OK”, Well, I didn’t think anything when he told me about buying off the truck.

He said, buy his lunch, “I will  buy my lunch today”, and … I did not like … (unintelligible) so, but I though he was talking about "Cader Crock" (I not sure I have transcribed this name correctly) , but …

Mr. Fagin: There is no doubt in your mind that this was Lee Harvey Oswald?

Mr. Frazier: This (They?, AS) was.

Mr.Fagin: Could you see the expression of his face, or anything you can tell us about the way he looked?

Mr. Frazier: There was nothing different about Lee. Expression on his face was … He looked perfectly normal. And that’s the last time I remember seeing him.

--------------

You may understand that it is too much of a memory lapse to say to Warren Commission about seeing Lee only in morning hours and immediately returning to the first floor (into the building) only to say later that he went to the corner of Houston and saw Oswald again. Does this prove Mr. Frazier flawless memory? How can we be certain in his statement about Prayer man not being Oswald if he was able to change his interpretation of events so substantially?

I have also highlighted in bold his direct statement about Lee saying that he will buy lunch on Friday "I will buy my lunch today". This is not what Lee told the interrogators. I have a big problem with the lunch sack because it shows that Mr. Frazier was able to deny a sensitive part of Lee Oswald's alibi. 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[John Butler]

      On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 6:32 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

"Andrej makes a good point. How could Frazier say that the person being pointed out -- Prayer Man -- wasn't Oswald when he had no idea who it was? An objective person would say that it might be Oswald for all he knows.

I wish the person asking the question would have asked Frazier how he knew that it wasn't Oswald standing there. Did he know that Oswald was somewhere else at the time?

 

When Frazier says he doesn't know who Prayer Man was is where I lose confidence in Frazier's veracity.  Any time I watch a Frazier video I come away with a similar impression.  Just a good old boy doing the best he could with what he had.  Maybe or maybe not."

Andrej,

I think you have said in a neat fashion what I was saying earlier without listing examples of my reservations concerning Buell Frazier.

[Andrej Stancak]

It seems at times that Prayer Man is just a blurred figure about which nothing can be known except that the person was "large".  I disagree with that view. Actually, we know already quite a lot about Prayer Man and I hope we learn even more.

Let us look at Prayer Man's hairline. Of course, the image is blurred and therefore, it would be hard to convince anyone that Prayer Man had exactly Lee Oswald's hairline. However, we can still use the hairline to narrow down the basic population from which Prayer Man could be chosen. It is about the probabilities of independent physical features in Prayer Man's figure. The better and more objectively we can determine the likelihood with which a certain feature could show similarity to Lee Oswald (or any other candidate person), the more accurate can we also estimate the odds with which Lee Oswald would be Prayer Man.

While claiming identity between Prayer Man's hairline and Lee Oswald's hairline would hardly fare well, we still can categorise Prayer Man's hair pattern according to well-established scales.

Hamilton's (Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, 53: 703-728,1950) and especially Norwood 's (Southern Medical Journal, 11: 1359-1365, 1975) scale of patterns of human baldness are well-established categorisation scales used in medicine to study baldness from many aspects such as genetics, hormones, risk of certain diseases etc. The Norwood scale basically divides male hair patterns into balding (III-VII) and non-balding (I-II) patterns.

 

The course of Prayer Man's hairline is delineated in the figure below. Please check if the yellow contour line in the right-hand panel would adequately copy Prayer Man's hairline in the enhanced image (middle panel).

 

This type of hairline, appears to be a non-balding hairline of type II with some minor receding hair in frontal temples. The next figure shows enhanced Prayer Man's hairline along with a profile view of Lee Harvey Oswald and the type II hair pattern from the Norwood scale.

 

The non-balding pattern II occurs in roughly 20% of the male population over the age categories from 18 to 80 years. Here is the table from the original Norwood's article giving the percentages for each type of hair pattern in different age groups:

 

The age group 18-29 years is represented the most in type II hair pattern, however, it can be seen across all age groups until very old age. The probability that a male having the type II hair pattern would be of 18-30 years is p = 0.2.

So, Prayer Man was a non-balding male with a hair pattern represented in about 20% of the male population. There is a slightly larger probability that this man would be young (18-29 years, 28%) than old (70 years, 19%) but not too different from a middle-aged man (30-39%, 26%).

Similar frequency data can be found in Setty (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 33: 49-56, 1970) which included 300 white males and 300 Afro-Americal males. This study, however, used a different categorisation scale compared to Norwood (1975).

 

A small quiz at end: which of the hairlines in the two persons displayed next to Prayer Man's head could match Prayer Man' hairline?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Guest]

On 5/24/2019 at 12:00 PM, John Butler said:

      On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 6:32 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

"Andrej makes a good point. How could Frazier say that the person being pointed out -- Prayer Man -- wasn't Oswald when he had no idea who it was? An objective person would say that it might be Oswald for all he knows.

I wish the person asking the question would have asked Frazier how he knew that it wasn't Oswald standing there. Did he know that Oswald was somewhere else at the time?

 

When Frazier says he doesn't know who Prayer Man was is where I lose confidence in Frazier's veracity.  Any time I watch a Frazier video I come away with a similar impression.  Just a good old boy doing the best he could with what he had.  Maybe or maybe not."

Andrej,

I think you have said in a neat fashion what I was saying earlier without listing examples of my reservations concerning Buell Frazier.

 

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t388p825-prayer-man-on-the-education-forum?highlight=albert+rossi+frazier

Scroll down for the post by Al Rossi (3rd from the bottom).

Hi all.  I was at the AARC.  I figured I might as well try it again, so I approached Buell with the
Robin Unger enhancement of the Darnell frame on my laptop desktop, and asked him

1.  if that was him
2.  who the other figure was.

He admitted 1. was him.
He said 2. was not clear enough for certain identification, but it probably wasn't Lovelady
because by that time he had taken off with Shelley for the RR yard.

 

Edited May 25, 2019 by Bart Kamp

[Andrej Stancak]

To continue the hairline aspect in Prayer Man's figure, let us look at the hairline of Lee Oswald's own brother, Robert. Robert was 4-5 years older than Lee and they both fell into the same age category 18-29 years in 1963. The genetic contributions to male baldness are strong. One recent genetic association study (Hagenaars et al., PlOS Genet., 2017, 13: e1006594) revealed that a set of snips has explained 51% of the occurrence of male baldness. Some data suggest that male baldness is inherited from the father of a male's mother. 

So, if Prayer Man has Type II hair pattern according to the Norwood scale, and Lee Oswald has the same type of hairline, would Robert Oswald also show the Type II pattern?

The figure below is a composite of two Robert's pictures taken during Lee's funeral, and the schematic Type II pattern of baldness from Norwood scale.

Robert, Lee's own brother, showed a similar Type II hair pattern as Lee (not surprising), and Prayer Man's hair pattern was also Type II. What is the probability that Lee Oswald would have the same type of hair pattern as Prayer Man, and Lee's own brother would have it too? 

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2019 by Andrej Stancak