Pat Speer

I spoke to James at two conferences. He specified on both occasions that the back of the skull was shattered beneath the scalp but remained in place until Humes peeled back the scalp. After falling under the sway of Michael Chesser, he changed this for his book. It pains me to think what else he's changed. Researchers love to complain when witnesses change their stories to fit the official story but fail to see or even acknowledge when witnesses change their stories to fit what all-too-many researchers are desperate to believe. It's an embarrassment, IMO.

I think the better question, Greg, is not would they lie, but why would they tell that lie. It seems a lot of today's researchers don't know their history. For decades the lunchroom encounter (the timing of, and Oswald's cool demeanor) was first and foremost in arguments for Oswald's innocence. IF it was a lie, it only follows, it should have been a much better lie, a much more useful lie. Here, I'll give it a try. Instead of saying they saw Oswald on the second floor, Baker and Truly say they saw him on the fifth, finishing up an order. That puts him closer to the sixth floor--destroying all the timing questions--AND has the added benefit of providing Baker and Truly with a logical reason for not detaining him. (The guy was working for chrissakes!) It also rids the WC of the Vickie Adams problem. (Well, Oswald ambled down and out after Vickie left the stairs, you see.) I'm sure you could come up with an even better one. Lies are told to push a chosen scenario. (Your radar gun must be defective, officer, because I was only going 55) To tell a lie that suggests an undesired scenario (I know you say I was going 80 but I am certain I was only going 77) is counter-productive and S-T-U-P-I-D.

I think you've told us something about yourself. Could your obsession with the LN position reflect not so much an ideological bias, as an emotional one...as an effort to keep the bread from getting greasy?

He didn't. He ran into Shelley at the back of the building. it's clear that Baker and Truly didn't just race across the floor. There was a brief discussion at the front entrance on how to reach the roof, etc. I've been to the TSBD. I've walked around the building. It is totally feasible that Lovelady and Shelley who were walking at a brisk rate past the island as Baker ran up to the front stairs, would reach the back of the building before Baker and Truly reached the back stairs. I assume it all flew past in a number of seconds. Lovelady and Shelley walk in the side door headed for the phone. Five seconds later, Adams and Styles come down, and run out the back door. Five seconds after that Baker and Truly rush up to the elevators. Truly then looks around and sees Shelley and tells him to watch the front elevator. He sees Piper and tells him to watch the back door. Truly and Baker then run up the stairs. Thirty seconds later, the west elevator comes down containing God knows who. Ten seconds after that Jack Dougherty ambles over and takes the west elevator back up to the now-abandoned sixth floor, and then down to the now abandoned fifth floor. Five minutes later Baker and Truly come down on the east elevator and see Dougherty at work. Dougherty starts to realize something is odd. He then comes down and asks Piper what's going on and Piper tells them the President was shot, or that someone shot at the President. He then goes looking for Truly and sees him in his office. (Yes, in a 1970 interview, Dougherty said he saw Truly in his office after he, Dougherty, came down and talked to Piper. Well, hell, that doesn't make sense if this happened right after the shots. Truly was, at least officially, up on the roof when Dougherty came down.) In any event, this whole web demonstrates just how awful/corrupt Ball and Belin were. They didn't ask the key questions, at least not on the record. And when these questions were asked in subsequent interviews, the answers provided were not what Ball/Belin/Warren would have wanted on the record. Coincidence? I don't think so. To be clear, then, here are some of the many reasons to believe Shelley and Lovelady beat Baker and Truly to the back of the building. 1. Baker said there were two white men standing near the elevators when he and Truly reached the back of the building. Outside something sinister, this could only be Shelley and Lovelady. 2. When asked by an HSCA investigator what he saw when he came back in the building, Lovelady said that "One policeman (and) Mr. Truly had run up the steps...I guess they went up the steps when they couldn't get the freight elevator to go upstairs." Now Lovelady's no grammarian. He could have been relating something he didn't see even though he was asked to specify what he did see. He was then asked "What else did you see that went on at that time after the police came in?" He responded "At that time, after Mr. Truly and (the) officer ran up, there were more Secret Service and FBI, I guess it was, that came in." It seems likely, then, that he was saying he saw them run upstairs. 3. Oswald said he spoke to Shelley as he exited the building. If Shelley was taking his sweet time over in the train yards, as in the scenario pushed by Ball/Belin, he would not have returned in time to speak to Oswald. 4. Vickie Adams said she raced downstairs after the shots. Her boss said she ran down the stairs before Baker and Truly ran up. That places her arrival on the first floor a few seconds before Baker and Truly's arrival at the elevators. And this suggests she would have crossed the floor within a few seconds of Shelley and Lovelady's crossing the floor to the phone. Well, by golly, she said she saw them. And not only that, she marked where she saw them--and it was right by the phone. There's a whole heap more, but I'm going to bed.

Let's say Adams saw Shelley by the phone a minute and 10 after the shooting. Baker and Truly headed over a few seconds later. Truly yelled out to Shelley to guard the front elevator and yelled out to Piper to guard the back door. Incredibly, Ball/Belin asked Shelley if he saw Baker and Truly run into the building but never asked if he saw them in the building. I feel certain it was because they didn't want to cut into the little scenario they'd cooked up to discredit Adams. Amazingly, neither Shelley nor Lovelady were asked if they saw Baker and Truly run upstairs. But as I recall Lovelady told the HSCA he saw Baker and Truly run upstairs. Oops. Ok. So there's mucho speculation involved. But let's flip it around. If someone other than Shelley took Sawyer upstairs, well, then who was it? And why would Truly tell Shelley to guard the front elevator AFTER he'd come down from the roof, 6-7 minutes after the shots, when cops were flooding into the building? FWIW, I think it's more than a coincidence that Oswald is believed to have come down the front stairs two minutes after the shooting and that he said he talked to Bill Shelley, who'd told him there'd be no more work that day. The front stairs hit the first floor right by the elevator. It only makes sense then that he encountered Shelley as he exited the building, and that Shelley lied about it later. I mean, I think most people would lie if they'd told a co-worker it was okay to go home and then found out the co-worker was a murder suspect. "Wait, no, I never saw him!" Yeah, okay.

There was obviously some confusion. Sawyer thought he went to the top floor. But it was the fourth floor. Now, it could be that he wanted to go to the sixth floor but was deliberately taken to the fourth floor by Shelley. That can't be ruled out.

It was Shelley alright. Mr. BALL - Now, did the police come into the building?Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, sir; they started coming in pretty fast.Mr. BALL - Did you go with them any place?Mr. SHELLEY - Yes; Mr. Truly left me guarding the elevator, not to let anybody up and down the elevator or stairway and some plainclothesmen came in; I don't know whether they were Secret Service or FBI or what but they wanted me to take them upstairs, so we went up and started searching the various floors. Once again, this was something Ball/Belin could have nailed down. But they didn't. And I suspect this was in part because they were afraid too much detail would destroy their predetermined conclusions Oswald never came down for lunch, and that he raced down from the sixth floor just after the shooting.

That was an awesome jacket.

That's not what he said. Mr. SAWYER. Immediately went into---well, talked to some of the officers around there who told me the story that they had thought some shots had come from one of the floors in the building, and I think the fifth floor was mentioned, but nobody seemed to know who the shots were directed at or what had actually happened, except there had been a shooting there at the time the President's motorcade had gone by. And I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor. And we went back to the storage area and looked around and didn't see anything. Mr. BELIN. Now you took an elevator up, is that correct? Mr. SAWYER. That's right. Mr. BELIN. The route that you took to the elevator, you went to the front door? Mr. SAWYER. Right. Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do? Mr. SAWYER. We got into the elevator. We run into this man. Mr. BELIN. Well, when you say you got into the elevator, where was the elevator as you walked in the front door? Mr. SAWYER. It was to the right. Notice how Belin avoids the question of who this man was like the plague. While Sawyer went upstairs with a man whom he believed worked in the building (almost certainly William Shelley) Belin refused to nail this down, because Shelley's presence at the front of the building at roughly 12:34 (after running around the outside of the building, and after calling his wife) supported Vickie Adams' recollection of seeing him at the back of the building within a minute or so of the shots. But notice as well that when Sawyer says "We run into this man" it's unclear what man he is talking about. I'd assumed he was backtracking a bit and referring to Shelley. But he could very well be saying someone came down in the elevator. If so, that is mighty curious. All of the men on the upper floors were accounted for, save Steven Wilson, who said nothing about coming down to the ground floor after the shooting.

The lunch sack was beneath the cart and can be seen in the Alyea film.

Not to belabor the point. But a pancake sandwich is bread with meat. Well a chicken sandwich is meat with bread. Same thing. Bread/meat...meat/bread...sandwich... Yes, I grew up with the idea that a sandwich was something you picked up and ate with one bite--meat and bread together. But my son prefers to eat his hot dogs by pulling the sausage from the bun, and then eating the bun and sausage separately. It's still a sandwich, no matter how you eat it. (Although I have argued differently while encouraging him to eat the sausage and bun together.) In any event, Williams' description for his lunch should be the least controversial thing about his testimony

Mr. BELIN. Now, Mr. Truly, did you notice when you got to the third floor--first of all. On the second floor, was there any elevator there? Mr. TRULY. No, sir. Mr. BELIN. What about the third floor? Mr. TRULY. No, sir. Mr. BELIN. Fourth floor? Mr. TRULY. No, I am sure not. Mr. BELIN. What about the fifth floor? Mr. TRULY. When we reached the fifth floor, the east elevator was on that floor. Mr. BELIN. What about the west elevator? Was that on the fifth floor? Mr. TRULY. No, sir. I am sure it wasn't, or I could not have seen the east elevator. Mr. BELIN. All right. Mr. TRULY. I am almost positive that it wasn't there. Mr. DULLES. You said you released the elevator and let it go down? Mr. TRULY. No; the east elevator was the one on the fifth floor.

I've had chopped chicken with the bones inside as well. I think it was Jamaican jerk chicken. But you don't eat the bones. You spit it out into your napkin and put it on the plate. If you think about it it's not all that different from spitting out watermelon seeds, sunflower seed shells, or the shells one inevitably comes across in a bucket of popcorn. Or even gristle from a steak...

Oh come on. Have you ever ordered a pancake sandwich? Most of the time it just means that sausage and/or bacon comes with the pancake. The same is true for a chicken sandwich. A lot of soul food or southern food restaurants sell "chicken sandwiches" where you get two slices of bread with a piece of chicken. I have ordered this myself at soul food restaurants on the west coast. It's a thing. And no, no one at these restaurants eats the chicken whole with the bone inside. They eat it like everyone else eats fried chicken. With their fingers. And this is important because there is no way Williams' prints were not all over his pop bottle. And the DPD's failure to acknowledge this, or to send the bottle to DC for fingerprinting by the FBI is a clear indication they were actively concealing evidence they could not pin on Oswald. So WHO KNOWS what else they suppressed, or lied about? Not the WC...which failed to follow up on this, as usual...

The question about strangers in the building was smoke, designed to distract. Many of those saying they didn't notice a stranger in the building also said they had never noticed Oswald, in the many weeks he'd worked there. Well, it follows then that there were just too many people working there for too many different companies for most employees to know who did or did not belong there. To make matters worse, of course, was that when they came back into the building after lunch, there were in fact strangers in the building, a lot of them. So those claiming they had not seen any strangers were obviously incorrect, and really saying that they had not noticed anyone they'd considered suspicious.

Truly said he looked up the shaft and saw that the elevators were stopped on an upper floor. He thought the fifth. He and Baker then ran up the staircase nearby, where they saw Oswald in a matter of seconds.

No one was watching the back part of the building during the lunch hour. Someone could have just walked in. PLUS.. A security service had keys to the building. Someone could have stolen keys from the service and come in during the night. This person could have then spent the morning hiding up on the seventh floor. OR perhaps perhaps...a member of this service was a right-wing looney (roughly 50% of Dallas' population at the time) who just helped himself to the keys. We don't know much about this second possibility... seeing as the WC failed to follow-up on this in any way...

I don't think that works. it took only 15 seconds or so for Baker and Truly to get from the elevators to the second floor staircase, where Baker spotted Oswald. That is an insufficient span of time for Oswald to come down on the elevator and walk quietly over to the break room.

Yes, absolutely. If they were dressed like cops or looked like cops no one would have noticed. I think it was Luke Mooney who said that two unidentified cops ran down the stairs as he ran up. Incredibly, the WC made no attempt at figuring out who they were!

For several years now I have been making the argument that the perp or perps took the elevator down as Baker and Truly ran up. They could have then walked out the side door without being seen. Or maybe they were seen... Several witnesses said they saw two men they assumed were FBI standing around behind the building after the shooting. Well, the FBI was not on the scene at that time. But it may not be that complicated. They may have walked out the front door. Oswald, after all, is purported to have walked out the front door--without anyone noticing! And it's worse than that. Pierce Allman and Terrence Ford went into the building just after the shots were fired, and used a phone. And yet, apparently, they were not questioned prior to their exit. Well, this means that there were strangers within the building, who were not questioned, for some time after the shots. And, well, this suggests they could have waited around until they found the right moment to escape. Here is an FBI report on Ford... "Mr. Ford stated that he had accompanied Mr. Allman to the corner of Houston and Elm Streets to watch the procession; that upon hearing shots, he retreated to a concrete building near the side of the small park bordering Elm Street, then running back toward the Texas School Book Depository. He followed Allman into the building, walking on his right side. He remembers Allman turning to his left to ask a white male the location of a telephone. Ford stated the white male, who he can neither identify nor describe, indicated in some manner that a telephone was inside a room directly ahead. Ford does not remember Allman identifying himself at this time. Ford stated that he did not have a press card at this time and did not identify himself to anyone until he left the building about one hour later." (CD354, p6)

Here is what Ball wrote Liebeler on May 6, 1964. "Eddie Piper: The deposition of Eddie Piper was taken in Dallas Texas on Wednesday, April 8 1964. Piper is a Janitor employed by the Texas School Book Depository. He watched the motorcade from the first floor window which opens on to Elm. After he heard the shots he walked away from the window. He saw Truly and some officer (Baker) run into the building and up the stairway. Ask Piper if he saw Jack Dougherty come to the first floor immediately afterwards. Dougherty has testified that he was on the fifth floor when he heard the shots; that he came to the first floor by way of the west elevator; that the first person 'whom he saw was Eddie Piper; that Piper then told him that the President had been shot. Also ask Eddie Piper if he saw Vickie Adams come to the first floor. If' he did see Vickie Adams find out if he saw Vickie before or after he saw Truly and the police officer go up the stairs. If he says that he saw Dougherty and Vickie Adams come to the first floor, ask him which one he saw first. Vickie Adams has testified that she ran to the first floor immediately after the shooting. As she did not see Truly' or Baker she must have come down the stairs after they went up the stairs." He stressed the importance of asking Piper about Dougherty. It is incredibly suspicious then that he ended up questioning Piper himself and failed to ask him about Dougherty, at least officially. This makes me suspect--no, scratch that, know--that Ball asked Piper questions about Dougherty off the record and then failed to ask them again after going on the record. He then added something into the WR about Dougherty and Piper being confused and unreliable. So it wasn't just Adams who was targeted and smeared by Ball/Belin. They should have been disbarred, IMO.

1. How does Piper not see this mystery person emerge from the elevator within a minute after seeing Truly? Possible answer... Several people entering through the back door would later remark that there was a black man watching the door. I suspect this was Piper, and that Truly had told him to guard the door. Whoever came down on the elevator may have seen him over there and turned around and went out the west entrance, which was unguarded for some time after the shooting. Piper would later say he had no idea who came down on the elevators. That suggests to me that, yessiree, he was not watching. 2. How does Dougherty miss all the commotion on the 1st floor as he walked from the bathroom to the elevator? Possible answer... Say Dougherty was in the loo. He comes out and Styles and Adams are long gone...Baker and Truly are already upstairs, and Shelley and Lovelady have returned to the front of the building, where Truly told Shelley to guard the entrance. He sees the open freight elevator, and goes back to work. 3. Piper does not see Dougherty or discuss the shots with him as he walked to the elevator? Possible answer... Nope. Piper is watching the rear entrance. But who knows? Ball/Belin failed to ask Piper about Dougherty. And they only asked Dougherty about Piper's comments once Dougherty returned to the first floor. 4, Why did Dougherty return to work at approx 12:32? Possible answer... Apparently, he only took a half hour for lunch. He came down at 12 and went back to work at 12:30. He was very conscientious and was the first to arrive every day. He'd finished his lunch and was anxious to get back to work. 5. Indications are that Oswald was in the Domino room at approx 12:23/5. Oswald and Dougherty make no mention of each other, so was Dougherty in the bathroom for up to 15 minutes? Possible answer... Dougherty later said he saw Oswald in the second floor break room when he came down to take his lunch in the Domino room. He also said he'd taken a look at the crowd outside but didn't feel like he could go out there. (He had anxiety issues, the nature of which is unclear.) So I think it's possible that between Oswald's going back and forth to the second floor to get drinks, and Dougherty's wandering around a bit...that they missed each other. Eddie Piper said that at 12:00 Oswald told him he was going up or out. if Dougherty came down at 12:00, as claimed, he may have seen Oswald as Oswald was getting a Coke. Perhaps Dougherty ate his lunch, went up to the front door to see what was going on, and then walked back to the bathroom, without realizing Oswald was inside the Domino room. Perhaps Oswald then walked back up to the second floor to get another Coke. Ball/Belin refused to do their job so we lack the information necessary to fully piece together what happened before and after the shooting. But there's no evidence Oswald went back up to the sixth floor, and strong evidence (IMHO) that someone other than Oswald took an elevator down from an upper floor.

Yes, that is pretty much it. And it's not as if I just dreamt it up one day. A few years back I did a deep dive and added a few chapters to my website on all the physical evidence linking Oswald to the sixth floor. Inspired by those who'd studied the films to try to ID the witnesses on the street, I then decided to read all the witness statements and see if I could place them in the building. Dougherty was the mystery man. But as I read his statements I was struck by his insistence that he came back from lunch after 12:30 and that the sound he heard came from above him. By reading all the statements of all the witnesses, moreover, I was struck by how Ball/Belin avoided asking a number of the witnesses important questions related to where they were in the aftermath of the shooting. Here's a few examples: 1. Baker said there were two men standing near the elevators when he came into the building. It is incredible to me that no effort was made to ID these men. I eventually came to realize that Ball/Belin suspected they were Shelley and Lovelady, and knew they couldn't put this on the record without supporting Vickie Adams' story. So presto! No one was asked about these men. 2. Dougherty said that after hearing the loud sound, he came down to the first floor and spoke to Eddie Piper--who told him the President had been shot, or some such thing. Well, why did Ball/Belin fail to ask Piper when this was? Did he fail to see the relevance? Nope. One of the WC internal memos briefly made available by Howard Willens on his website (before he found out I was using them to draw the WC's conclusions into question and had them removed) was a memo from Joe Ball to Liebeler outlining the questions to ask Piper. Foremost among these were questions about Dougherty. And yet, when Ball questioned Piper himself, he didn't ask him about Dougherty. This suggests two scenarios--neither of which is pleasant. Either Ball realized that he couldn't trust Liebeler to pre-interview Piper and not ask the questions he wanted kept off the record, or Liebeler did in fact interview Piper, and Ball decided to trash it and re-do it himself. In any event, he used Piper to say he didn't see Adams come down (which was probably true seeing as he was up by the coffee and probably distracted by Baker and Truly coming in the front door), but cut Piper off when he said he didn't know who brought the elevators down after the shooting. I made a whole list of them. In any event, from reading all the statements and testimony of all the TSBD witnesses it becomes clear that Ball/Belin avoided asking questions (and coming to the proper conclusions related to questions) regarding 1) Oswald's whereabouts prior to the shooting, 2) The timing of Dougherty's return to work and subsequent descent in the elevator, and 3) the timing of Adams and Styles descent on the stairs. They KNOWINGLY pushed a scenario on the public they knew had holes--and they did so, moreover, under orders from Warren, who told them he wanted a clean record, i.e. a whitewash.

No, they had already left. They ran into Vicki's boss, Peggy Ann Garner, and some other unnamed women from the 4th floor.

The freight elevators were not stuck on the upper floors due to a power outage. They were stuck up there because the east elevator could not be called to another floor, and the west elevator could only be called if the gates were pulled down. Jarman and Norman took the west elevator up to the fifth, and left the gate up so they could use it to come down. And Williams is presumed to have taken the east elevator down from the sixth to the fifth. So both elevators would have been stuck on the fifth, precisely as claimed by Baker and Truly. It seems clear, moreover, that Dougherty took the west elevator back up after the shooting. So how did it get down? Someone must have taken it down. But not any of the fifth floor witnesses. They raced down to the fourth floor where they ran into some women who were looking out the west side windows.