The 6th Floor Escape

[Colleen McGuire]

I have listened to the Black Op Radio podcast #963, October 31, 2019, twice regarding John Armstrong’s essay Escape from the 6th Floor and studied the essay for a good 3 hours.   Although I am not in the construction business as John is I am an attorney and in that regard I pay close attention to evidence.   

I am intrigued by John’s escape theory via the passenger elevator, but there are some weak spots.  One regards the the egress logistics,

John writes:    The elevator cabin had to be stopped in place on the 4th floor, waiting for the men on the 6th floor. As the Presidential parade was driving west on Main St., the passenger elevator was on the 1st floor. An accomplice could push the 4th floor call button on the inside of the elevator, which would send the elevator to the 4th floor. When the elevator reached the 4th floor the floor indicator light read "4," and the accomplice would know the elevator was in place. The accomplice, still standing in front of the elevator on the 1st floor, could signal his accomplice--standing 60 feet away by the electrical panels--to turn off the electricity.  

When I study the floor diagrams provided in John’s essay, the passenger elevator is in the FRONT of the building but the electrical panels are next to the freight elevators in the BACK of the building.  They didn't have cellphones in those days. 

QUESTION:  How exactly did that signaling take place?

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Colleen McGuire said:

I have listened to the Black Op Radio podcast #963, October 31, 2019, twice regarding John Armstrong’s essay Escape from the 6th Floor and studied the essay for a good 3 hours. 

When I study the floor diagrams provided in John’s essay, the passenger elevator is in the FRONT of the building but the electrical panels are next to the freight elevators in the BACK of the building.  They didn't have cellphones in those days. 

QUESTION:  How exactly did that signaling take place?

Colleen,

I started reading through John's essay, and a couple of things jumped out at me too. I haven't gotten to your question of the "signaling" yet.

http://www.harveyandlee.net/TSBD_Elevator/TSBD_elevator.html

 

Mr. Ball. Did you stay at your desk?
Mrs. Hines. Yes, sir. I was alone until the lights all went out and the phones became dead

 

Mrs. Hines wanted to see what had happened so she hurried down the hall to the office of Lyons and Carnahan (see #2-photo below), a publishing company with an office facing Elm Street (follow the green line On 2nd floor diagram below). She knocked on the door but nobody answered. She then hurried to the office of Southwest Publishing, another office that faced Elm Street (see #3-photo below). A young lady was in the office talking on the telephone, but would not answer the door.

 

One floor below, on the 4th floor, was the office of the Scott Forseman Company. Office workers Sandra Styles, Victoria Adams, Elsie Dorman, and supervisor Dorothy Garner were watching the parade thru their office window.

 

If the phones became dead, how could another worker be talking on the telephone?

If Geneva Hines was on the 2^nd floor, how could the 4^th floor be one floor below?

Geneva Hines heard the shots and wanted to find out what happened, but in her travels, she walked right passed the elevator and the stairs leading down to the first floor. The "lights were out".  Why didn't she just go outside?

 

Steve Thomas

[Paul Brancato]

As to communications while phone lines were dead, there may have been hand held devices linked to the communications bunker under the Fairgrounds manned by Army Intelligence 

[Ron Bulman]

Just about any speculation about how "they " escaped the 6th floor is just that.  But it's reality somebody shot from there, Mauser or Manicher, a hit a miss or a distraction.  

I've mentioned parts of this before in other threads but I wonder if it was a professionally orchestrated operation was it not rehearsed?  At least one observation of practice shooting from the grassy knoll is documented.  Access to and egress from the sixth floor was also likely given dry runs.

From the last (sixth floor) shot to the freight elevator, running would be less than a minute, to the ground floor in another.  Out the back door immediately to the left.  Elevator sent immediately back up.  It took Baker and Truly at least a couple of minutes to get there in reality?  Before they charged up the stairs past the break room and Baker looked back through the 6 X  6 window.  

Regarding radio communication, though crude we have radio man's trailing antenna setting there net to Umbrella man.  I think MI and the CIA had more advanced, discreet forms of communication by that point in time. 

[Pat Speer]

There really isn't much of a mystery about how the sixth floor shooter escaped. He took the elevator down as Baker and Truly were running up the stairs. Ball and Belin pretended this elevator was brought down by Dougherty. But that was a con job.

[Steve Thomas]

8 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

 Out the back door immediately to the left.  Elevator sent immediately back up.

Ron,

Don't forget James Worrell.

And, if the shooters had escaped,  who was doing the elevator sending?

Steve Thomas

[Paul Bacon]

On ‎12‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 9:18 AM, Steve Thomas said:

If the phones became dead, how could another worker be talking on the telephone?

It might have been within this forum (I'm not sure where I read it) that someone suggested that the phone lines didn't actually cease to work, it was just that the lights on the phones went out.  I don't remember how phones were designed in '63, but the idea was that the lights on the phone were powered by house current but the actual communication was powered by the telephone company.  So Geneva Hines may not have been able to take incoming calls.

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Paul Bacon said:

It might have been within this forum (I'm not sure where I read it) that someone suggested that the phone lines didn't actually cease to work, it was just that the lights on the phones went out.  I don't remember how phones were designed in '63, but the idea was that the lights on the phone were powered by house current but the actual communication was powered by the telephone company.  So Geneva Hines may not have been able to take incoming calls.

Paul,

You jogged my memory about something. I had a conversation with Ron Ecker about this in 2016.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23210-rio-grande-building/?tab=comments#comment-337553

At the time, I suggested it might be a matter of interpretation of what Geneva Hine actually said. In her WC testimony, she testified,

"Miss HINE. Yes, sir: I was alone until the lights all went out and the phones became dead because the motorcade was coming near us and no one was calling..."

At the time, I asked if the phones actually went out, or did they just become silent because no one was calling because they were all outside watching the parade?

Of course, that wouldn't explain any long distance calls.

 

Steve Thomas

[Larry Hancock]

Its impossible to know for sure but my suspicion is in line with Paul's above.  At that time it was common for certain types of business phones to support multiple extensions, with a light/pressure switch for each.  The light would remain on while a call was in progress but go dark when it disconnected. If she was at a phone which had buttons for several different extensions she might actually be saying that the lights went off on all the extensions because folks dropped off calls and were not using their phones as the motorcade approached.  

I've looked into this at some length over the years and there is no sign of any telephone outage or power outage in the local area of the TSBD or of Dallas overall.

[Anthony Mugan]

Hello all

Coincidentally I was considering a post on a very similar theme. I agree with with main points being made by Colleen McGuire, Pat Speer and some others.

Whilst we can not be certain the exit route proposed via the passenger elevator (including lifting floor boards etc.) seems unnecessarily complex, time consuming to set up and would leave visible traces (loose floorboards).

The west lift was on the fifth floor when Baker and Truly were on the 1st floor and not on the 5th floor by the time they got there. None of the employees reported riding it down and it had not responded to Truly’s attempts to bring the elevator down.

In other words person or persons unknown got into the west elevator between 1 and approximately three minutes after the first shot based on the WC timings for the Baker-Truly run and how fast people seemed to be able to move between floors.

Victoria Adams stated in her WC testimony that when she came back into the building the west elevator was on the 2nd floor, but that neither the passenger lift nor the west elevator was working.

I’m not therefore averse to the idea that someone may have switched the internal power supply off and on again (and off again.....???) it may be simpler to consider that the door of the lift may have been left ajar of course, which would hold it on the fifth floor. 

So overall, the most likely exit route would seem to involve the stairs from the 6th to the 5th floor and then the west lift. Not clear if they took the lift all the way down or got off at the second floor and walked out from there (or someone else then moved the lift back to the second floor).

Oswald’s presence on the 2nd floor just after the shooting and Adam’s statement about the west lift made me sit up a bit, but the timings don’t work re: Baker and Truly for it to be him moving it down.

Overall I’m increasingly of the view that the decision to select the TSBD as one of the shooter locations requires the shooters to have been reasonably confident of entrance and exit routes and having suitable positions to shoot from, which would require collaboration (witting or unwitting) from inside. Discussion on that seems to focus on Truly and Shelley (possibly correctly) but for some reason misses the obvious point that Oswald was clearly involved in some way in this (he bought the rifle) and was on-site for over a month beforehand.

 

 

[Anthony Mugan]

Just one further thought. 
Oswald was on the second floor 90 seconds to 2 minutes after the shots.

The west lift cane down from the fifth floor, with the movement commencing more than 1 minute but no more than about three minutes after the shooting.

Some minutes later the west lift was reported by Vickie Adams as being on the 2nd floor....Nobody reports the west lift on the 1st floor....

Oswald had bought the Mannlicher Carcanno and probably brought it into the building. The plotters almost certainly had someone (or more than one) inside the TSBD (witting or unwitting)

Why would the shooters get off at the second floor....? Was Oswald meeting them for some purpose???

Now that really is speculation!