Pat Speer

So...what are you saying? It would appear you are shooting yourself in the foot. The vast majority of LNs subscribe to what I call the LPM theory (Lattimer, Posner, and Myers). it holds that the first shot was fired circa 160, the second circa 224, and the last circa 313. This suggests the gap between the last two shots was 36% or so longer than the gap between the first two shots. Well, guess what? The effect of stress on people's perception of time has been widely studied, and I have read a number of these studies. They found that time s-l-o-w-s down for people as a stressful situations develop and that their estimation of the length of a stressful episode is on average 50% longer than the actual episode. Well, this means that, should the shots have actually been fired at 160, 224, and 313, that people would routinely remember the gap between the last two shots as being roughly twice as long as the gap between the first two shots, and that no one but no one would remember the last two shots as being close together. IOW, the fact a few people thought the shots were evenly spaced does not help the Oswald did it scenario...at all.

As I recall, Kilduff studied at the Hugh Aynesworth school of cognitive dissonance. They both insisted the last two shots were bang-bang, right on top of each other. But they both insisted Oswald fired all the shots. They didn't seem to grasp that if the shots were within a second or two, as implied by their statements, that it couldn't have been Oswald acting alone. And they didn't seem to grasp that 99% of all LN theorists have deluded themselves into thinking the last two shots were 5 seconds apart. Not bang-bang.

David, you corrected me in that I thought WBAP was the TV station when you said it was the radio station. But the TV station could not have been far behind, yes? Have you ever looked into when the TV station first mentioned Oswald by name? Or any other station beyond WFAA? Because we all know that newsmen hate to get scooped and it seems clear that every media outlet in town would have been spewing Oswald's name within minutes of its first mention at 2:37.

My recollection is that Oswald was at the station by 2. Why would no one be dispatched to find out about him for half and hour? I suspect you are relying upon the same reports that misrepresent the time of arrival at the Paine's. These reports were not signed and there are no originals in the Dallas files. There's no evidence then that these reports were even written by the men who supposedly wrote them. We have reason to suspect then that these reports were a fairy tale put together by one of Fritz's top Lt.s in the days after the shooting. As I recall his name was T.L. Baker.

They weren't waiting there for 40 minutes or whatever. That was a lie. From patspeer.com Chapter 4c: In 2014, I read a report written by Buddy Walthers, one of the deputy sheriffs the Dallas detectives had been waiting for. Walthers claimed he'd witnessed Oswald's arrest at the Texas Theater, drove back to the sheriff's office, and was then told to drive out to Irving, along with deputies Weatherford and Oxford. He said they drove straight there. Now, this was a hmmm moment for me. I've been to Dallas, and realized that a trip from the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff to downtown Dallas and then back out to Irving would take about 40 minutes. Oswald was arrested around 1:50. Walthers should have arrived at the Paine's residence around 2:30, not 3:30. Now, hmmm, did the deputies take a lunch break, and make three Dallas detectives trying to interview the wife of the suspected murderer of the President--not to mention a Dallas cop--wait for them while they chomped on a burger, or ate donuts? No, of course not. An 11-28-63 article in the Dallas Morning news, built around interviews with Walthers, Weatherford and Oxford, relates that they drove to the Paine residence with two Dallas detectives, and not that the detectives were waiting for them when they got there. And there's also this. When asked by Warren Commission counsel Albert Jenner if the police arrived at 3:30, as claimed, Ruth Paine replied "Oh, I think it was earlier, but I wouldn't be certain." Hmmm... We have reason to doubt the story handed down by the Dallas detectives--that they waited till 3:30 for the sheriffs--do we not? Let's see, then, if we can pin down the actual time the Dallas detectives started talking to people at the Paine residence. In Marina and Lee--a 1977 book built upon numerous interviews with Oswald's wife, Marina--it is claimed that the detectives came to the door an hour after Kennedy's death was announced. Well, heck, there it is again. Kennedy's death was announced around 1:30. This put the arrival of the detectives at...2:30. Now, ain't that a coinkydink? We have another way to confirm this 2:30 approximation, moreover. Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine both claimed they'd been watching TV coverage of the shooting but had no idea Oswald had been arrested when the detectives came to their door. They said as much numerous times. Here are some recent examples: In 2002, Thomas Mallon published Mrs. Paine's Garage, a book built upon numerous interviews of Ruth Paine. Here is how Mallon described the arrival of the police at Mrs. Paine's door on 11-22-63: "There was a knock at the door. Ruth answered it and discovered a whole group of law enforcement officers, including men from the the Dallas County sheriff's department. She surmised that they were there to serve papers in connection with the divorce, until one of them announced that Oswald was in custody for shooting a policeman." And we needn't rely upon Mallon's words, either. In Where Were You? (2013), Ruth Paine described hearing about the shooting on TV, and then watching the coverage all the way up to the announcement of Kennedy's death. She then related: "It was really not too long after that there was a knock at the door, and several police officers said they had Lee Oswald in custody for shooting an officer." And she wasn't done. The 2013 book November 22, 1963 similarly includes a chapter written by the famous Ruth Paine. There, she related: "I first heard about Oswald's being in custody when police arrived at my door and told me so." So, let's think--when was Oswald's arrest announced on TV? An email chain from Gary Mack to David Von Pein, posted online, reflects their conclusions Oswald's name was first mentioned on WFAA TV around 2:40 and WBAP TV at 2:43. Hmmm... The timing of these reports makes it really difficult to believe that Marina and Ruth wouldn't have known of Oswald's arrest by the time the detectives arrived, should they have actually arrived at 3:30, as claimed. And, no, we're not done. The Warren Commission testimony of Michael Paine further erodes the credibility of the detectives' story. Paine told the commission he arrived at the house around 3:00 or 3:30, after hearing of Oswald's arrest on TV, and driving over from his work. As Paine was reported to have been working at Bell Helicopter, in Arlington, this placed his arrival around 3:00. Paine claimed, moreover, that the police were already searching the house upon his arrival. This last point was confirmed, moreover, by the report of Deputy Sheriff Weatherford, in which he claimed Paine arrived at the house about 15 minutes after he'd arrived. Well, this places the arrival of the police and deputies at the door around 2:45, not 3:30. There are still other reasons to doubt the 3:30 time of arrival proposed by detectives Rose, Adamcik, and Stovall in their report. While watching a video of Buell Wesley Frazier's 3-27-13 appearance at the Irving Central Library, one of the questions from the audience rang out like a bell. What, a man asked, led the police to come out to Irving so quickly? This man's wife was friends with Frazier's niece, Diana, and she remembered seeing the police talking to Frazier's family (presumably Frazier's sister Linnie Mae Randle) when she walked home from school at...gulp...2:30. Well, there it is again. I then realized there was yet another way to check this out. The report of Deputy Sheriff Walthers offers that upon his arrival in Irving Ruth Paine gave him the phone number of Oswald's rooming house, and that he called this in to the Sheriff's office so they could look it up in a reverse directory. Walthers said he gave the number to Sheriff Bill Decker. Decker said he gave the number to his assistant, Alan Sweatt. As Dallas homicide chief Capt. Will Fritz said he couldn't remember who gave him Oswald's address, but acknowledged receiving the address from someone and then sending three detectives out to the Oak Cliff location, it seems almost certain Sweatt was his source, and that Sweatt called Fritz to give him the address and tell him the address was in his jurisdiction. So...at what time did the Dallas detectives Fritz sent out to Oak Cliff arrive in Oak Cliff? 3:00... In his initial report (24H317) Dallas Police detective Walter Potts said he arrived at Oswald's rooming house at 3:00. He later testified it was "about 3." He was accompanied by detective R.L. Senkel and Lt. E. L. Cunningham. Neither Cunningham nor Senkel testified before the commission, but Senkel did write a separate report that is in the commission's records. In this report, Senkel confirmed that they went to the door "at 3:00 PM" (24H245). They had went to the door at 3:00 PM, let's reflect, in response to information that their fellow detectives would come to claim they didn't receive until after 3:30. It seems clear as day then that Dallas detectives Rose, Adamcik, and Stovall went up to the Paine residence around 2:30. NOT 3:30, as claimed in their report.

No, you misunderstand me. I never met Mack in person but I probably exchanged 3 dozen messages and emails with him over the years. He was very closed-minded in his later years. But he never abandoned some of his early inklings. He never disavowed Badgeman or the dictabelt. And he said, on camera, more than once, that while most of the CT stuff was nonsense, that he still felt that a conspiracy could not be ruled out, and that he personally suspected a conspiracy. He was the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum. He was the media's go-to guy on the assassination. While his TV appearances on the Disco Channel were awful, and deceptive, he pushed both in his appearances and in his role at the Sixth Floor that CTs weren't nuts, and that much of the case was a mystery. He was not the boogey-man some make him out to be. He just wasn't the ally most hoped he would be when he first got the job.

Edward Epstein's book Legend is a detailed look at Oswald's contact with the Soviets. It was published by Reader's Digest. I think it was a best-seller. Epstein's main source was the recently-retired James J. Angleton. It is my recollection that Epstein/Angleton mused that Oswald did the killing for the Russians for God knows why--perhaps because they hate us for our freedom. In any event, the book made a small dent on the general public but was largely dismissed by the research community. There was another book around this same time by Hugh McDonald, the writer of the best-seller Appointment in Dallas. This one held that while Oswald did some of the shooting, he missed, and was part of a plot in which he was supposed to be killed by a second sniper--who was--get this--the Mexico City Mystery Man. In McDonald's follow-up he mused that LBJ was in on it and had been compromised by the KGB.

While I hate to agree with the wrong Steve (LOL), I think Roe is correct about this. The timeline pushed in these reports was a lie. (I suspect this was done to hide that the DPD knew about the bag before they "found" a bag, but it could have just been a mistake.) I went through all the statements of Marina, Ruth, Michael, Linnie Mae, Will Fritz, etc. and it's clear there was no 40-minute wait outside the house. I mean, c'mon, Oswald is a suspected cop killer and assassin. They are not just gonna sit around and do nothing while following "procedure". They went to the front door and Ruth invited them in. Mission accomplished.

As stated, I have not spent much time or energy on the Tippit case. But I think I see what's really going on here. Myers is angry as hell that his book is not being treated as the end-all be-all. It drives him insane. He may very well be right in that the book should be more widely studied by those writing about the Tippit killing. That's not the point. The point is that this anger has led Myers to mis-represent some of the facts. And to assert as fact one assertion that it is flat out stupid. Ridiculously stupid. Drool on the floor stupid. Stoopid. He asserts that the (non-Oswald) print on the car is irrelevant. This shows Myers' true colors and reveals a HUGE gaping hole in his book. If he was half the researcher he claims to be he would have used his contacts in cop land to submit this print for an FBI check. Because it matters. Yes, it could not be proved that the print came from the killer. But what Myers deliberately avoids because he is not really interested in any truth besides the killer being Oswald is that the ID of the print could have opened a new door in the case. And helped him sell 10-20x as many books. Because...the timing of the print is not the only relevant thing about this print, is it? It matters, really matters, whose print it is. Say the print is tied to a local gas station attendant. It helps Myers' cause. But say the print is tied to a known hit man from Chicago who flew in the night before and flew out the next day. Oops! A door opens! The guy could have walked by the car at Top Ten Records. But it doesn't matter. Why was a known mobster touching Tippit's car? Or say the print belonged to an ex-cop living on the outskirts of Dallas, who had recently come into some money. Once again, a door opens. What's up with that? So I think that Myers reveals his bias in his assertion the print is irrelevant. I remember reading an article on Lt. Day that said that, upon his retirement from the DPD, he'd had numerous offers to perform independent fingerprint exams for defendants, but refused to do so, as it wouldn't feel right to use his skills to help exonerate the wrongfully accused. This is a massive problem, btw. The FBI, after years of training field agents to work in its crime lab, came to the conclusion that work in the field affected one's judgement, and led to a bias against suspects, whereby these crime lab "experts" were far more likely to misrepresent or overstate evidence than the crime lab experts with a scientific background. At that point, they changed policy, and stopped hiring crime lab employees from the field. In any event, I suspect Myers is of this same mindset and is losing his mind at the thought of Greg Doudna taking his work on the print to suggest Oswald's possible innocence. A real researcher, one actually interested in the truth, would write Greg and discuss ways that they could get the print analyzed. Although the ability to take a single print and figure out whose print it was (beyond a suspect's) did not exist in 1963, it does now. So maybe the case can move forward. Even if it's just to prove the print belonged to some gas station attendant... P.S. It occurs to me that while Myers is now dismissive of the print, it's possible he made attempts to discover the identity of the print that were detailed in his book. If so, well, he was a better researcher then than he now appears to be.

To be clear, Gary Mack remained a CT till the end. He dismissed almost everything in the CT literature, but still admitted he suspected there was a conspiracy. I'm also fairly certain he retained suspicions surrounding his two additions to the CT literature; that is, I don't think he ever renounced Badgeman or that the dictabelt recorded extra shots. As for Epstein, I don't think he was ever a full-blown CT. His book focused on the political and somewhat inept nature of the WC, and remains relevant today. Later, as you write, he fell under Angleton's sway. But as I recall he concluded Oswald did the shooting, but that he'd been under the control of the Soviets. In other words, I don't think he became an LN. In the CT world that's a fine distinction, I know. We think anyone who says Oswald did it is an LN. But that's not accurate. "Oswald-did-it while under the influence or actual control of the commies (or even the mafia)" adherents like Epstein, Russo, Shenon, and (I believe, still to this day) Blakey, are not true LNs, and are viewed with suspicion and distrust by those who still wish to believe Oswald did it because Marina didn't cuddle enough on the eve of the shooting. To those people, the true LNs, no one but Oswald (and maybe Marina) can be responsible. Period.

Around the 50th anniversary, I tried to reach across the aisle. I exchanged emails with Howard Willens, Burt Griffin, and Skeptic Magazine editor Michael Shermer. I also sent an email to Robert Blakey, who'd provided me with his email address and said he would take a look at whatever I sent his way. The subject of these emails was the single-bullet theory. I presented them with some of the evidence I'd presented at the Bethesda conference. Their responses were illuminating. Willens and Griffin both said they refused to look at the evidence knowing I felt the evidence suggested Arlen Specter had lied, and lied repeatedly, about the back wound location. They said this was unthinkable. And that we had nothing to talk about as long as I subscribed to this notion. Shermer, who I'd met at a local high school, similarly dismissed what I'd presented, without even looking at it. He said that I was lost in the minutiae and that the only way to see the truth of something was to step back and ignore the details. (Note that this was the exact opposite of what he'd said in his speech at the local high school.) Blakey refused to respond. I emailed him two more times to make sure he got the first email and he still refused to respond. I think it was shortly after that where I came across a recent interview where he complained about the CIA's lying to the HSCA about Joannides, while at the same time boasting that the HSCA had proved the single-bullet theory to be true. I realize that this happens on both sides of the aisle, or both sides of the fence, whatever. But this experience drove home the fact that people are not logical interpreters of the truth, and that the "truth" is subservient to how people feel.

I think it was mostly the DPD. The FBI faked some stuff as well, IMO, but it was after Oswald was dead. The Secret Service is in the same boat. I don't really have an issue with any of the Sheriff's Dept. stuff from 11-22. When you read their statements, after all, virtually every deputy said he thought shots had come from west of the depository.

How could they not? He was a Marxist. That was as good as being a baby-eater in Dallas.

You keep ignoring the elephant in the room, David. Police departments in general and the DPD in particular were not above faking and concealing evidence once they thought they had their man. Once Oswald was arrested, there was no way they would let him walk--no matter what the evidence was. So fake this a little. Fake that a little. Pretend this happened so you can avoid admitting blank. it seems that you (and perhaps Dale M) are a bit pollyannish on this subject. Watch the Thin Blue Line. And then watch it again. And then read Randall Adams' book. The DPD lied and tried to frame him. So how can we assume they hadn't done as much with Oswald? P.S. My apologies, Tom. In looking back over the last few pages I see you already made my basic points.

There will be no knockout. They are working from different sets of facts. The debate would be a parade of "what about this" and "what about that". People inclined to believe one set of facts will think Myers won in a landslide, while people inclined to distrust his facts will think he got crushed.

We can suspect so. I talked to him briefly and eavesdropped on a number of his conversations at a 2014 meet and greet at the beginning of a conference in Bethesda. And he certainly sounded like he was on the fence. As I recall he expressed no interest in researching the medical or ballistics evidence. He saw himself as a reporter, reporting on what the witnesses said, and what the "experts" told him. I think the one avenue of interest he retained at the time was the Veciana story, and I suspect Newman has convinced him that's a nothing burger.

To be clear, I have focused on the shooting in Dealey and remain open-minded about the Tippit shooting. It has no bearing on Oswald's guilt re Kennedy, but may have been a factor in his death. Cop Killers don't live very long. The police somehow make sure of that.

About the only thing that John McAdams and I agreed upon was that the Tippit killing is not the Rosetta Stone etc. That's garbage. If Oswald was running for his life he may very well have killed Tippit. it's a separate issue from the Kennedy assassination. The argument that he must have been guilty or he wouldn't have killed a cop is just make-believe. It evaporates by the light of day. if he was on the run for his life and thought he'd been set up, a cop is exactly who he'd kill, because that would be the person who would be his greatest threat.

Thanks. I might get it. I think I bought James Jenkins' book on kindle but don't remember how to access it. I'm a bit of a luddite.

I am actually an agnostic on this issue. But c'mon David. A lot of the facts you cite have been disputed. As a consequence, you are accusing people of believing in a scenario you know they don't believe. Not cool.

No. I don't think so. I'm not aware of any articles linked to on this forum that are deliberately insulting to any current members. Are you? if so, maybe we should remove the links. P.S. I think you understand that saying someone is wrong or that you disagree with them is perfectly acceptable, but there's a level of nastiness in Myers' article that would definitely not be allowed on the forum.

There's an expression: "Plays well with others". No one has ever used that expression to describe Dale Myers. I doubt he could last one day before he went off on a rant about how stupid most of us are and that if only we could accept his genius, we would all see the light. While I would agree that he knows a lot about certain aspects of the case, there is no sense of collegiality about the man. As a result, he would not be a good fit for this or any other forum.

First of all, I'm not sure this thread should be allowed. If one can't abuse fellow forum members, one probably shouldn't be allowed to link to articles in which fellow forum members are abused. Second, Myers is his own worst enemy. Whether or not he is correct in that Oswald killed Tippit, he comes across as unhinged. I mean why does he have to throw in that Oswald was an "avowed Marxist"? Are "avowed Marxists" inherently violent and murderous? The thought occurs that Myers is a bit confused on this issue and has mistaken "Marxism" for "Anarchism". Third, he deliberately sets a bar that he knows few can hurdle. Apparently, you can't share thoughts about the Tippit murder if you don't own a copy of the Dallas Police tapes, and you haven't studied his book. Well, hell. He says he received his copy of the tapes decades ago. Did it occur to him that the tapes are not readily available today? if they are, perhaps he should have posted a link so people could hear them for themselves. If they're not, perhaps he should put the tapes up on his freakin' website. It would be a lot better use of bandwidth than yet another rant from yet another unhinged theorist. (it kinda makes me wonder if Bugliosi had rabies, and somehow infected his collaborator.) This brings me to his book. I thought about buying Myers' book years ago but decided against it. It is ridiculously over-priced. You can't have it both ways. You can't whine that no one will read your book in which you argue against which most people with an interest have come to believe, when you have it ridiculously over-priced. It''s economics 101. When you have a product which people will be reluctant to buy you have to entice them by making it affordable. I mean, I got Bugliosi's doorstop (which had probably 8-10 times as much material as Myers' had in his book) for less than half the price that Myers was charging, last I looked. I, myself, have a website, with probably 20x as much valuable material as Myers has in his book. And he's never offered me a penny. And lastly, he takes a quote from me in which I offered Bill Brown some sincere advice, and makes it look like a threat. I think this is disingenuous. But I'll let Bill answer if he felt threatened by my suggestion he should play nice. (if that's the way it came across, I apologize.)

Yes, it's sickening. O'Reilly lent his name to a book mostly written by a hack, and then promoted the heck out of it on his show. Nat Geo I think it was then bought the "film rights" or whatever and made a TV movie starring Rob Lowe as Kennedy. By my estimation, O'Reilly not only made more money off his "efforts" than any CT, but more than Bugliosi, Posner, etc. And the irony/sickening thing about it is that I don't know one LN who takes it seriously and thinks it anything more than a piece of crap.

At one point, I looked into this. While people like Lane, Lifton, Groden, and Livingstone made some money off the case, it wasn't much in comparison to the money made by Posner, Bugliosi, O'Reilly, and Swanson. Well, who's Swanson you might ask? Swanson is James Swanson, who wrote a series of young adult best-sellers detailing the assassination of Lincoln and the hunt for Booth. He wrote a dumbed-down re-telling of the assassination entitled End of Days (which relied almost entirely on the Warren Report) and was able to convince a prominent publisher to front him 1 million for his efforts. It was published to no acclaim and little audience, along with a heavily illustrated version of the book entitled The President has been Shot!. This last bit is quite telling, IMO. I doubt any prominent writer with a CT slant could get a million up front to write a book pushing the CT angle, although it would almost certainly sell more than Swanson's garbage. Perhaps Jim D can share with us the advance they got for his new book. This had a movie tie-in. And an association with Oliver Stone. Even so, I'd bet it was far less than 1 million.