Pat Speer

And the answer remains: Because he'd seen Oswald a few minutes before, and that Oswald had left afterwards. No one else had done so.

Because Oswald had been in the building, and had been the employee he'd last observed before he went up to the roof. Oswald's no longer being there was suspicious, while the others? Not so much. It is telling, moreover, that the DPD put out an APB on Givens. This supports that they were concerned about male warehouse workers who did not return after lunch. Oswald was even more suspicious. He'd left after the shooting. What is revealing per se about all this is not that they focused on Oswald but that the media and Oswald-did-it crowd pushed for decades that they focused on Oswald because he was the ONLY employee who was missing. This wasn't exactly true. It was a shortcut to what was true--that he was the only one known to be in the building who was missing. But it got repeated for decades because those anxious to blame Oswald are also anxious to reduce nuance and detail. There is a desperate desire to paint this whole thing as black and white. And that says more about themselves than it does about what happened. (Other common shortcuts: Oswald was a commie, and commies hate capitalists. Oswald was a wife-beater, and wife-beaters are vicious beasts. Oswald was a nobody, who was anxious to make a name for himself. Oswald was a loser, who hated men of class and privilege. The use of these shortcuts, IMO, is not necessarily the mark of a low intellect, so much as it is a sign of a lack of curiosity, and courage).

It's probably just another one of their glitches. I placed a 15 dollar order awhile back that was supposed to come in 2 days via Amazon Prime. It didn't show. They sent me a message apologizing for the delay and said it would show the next day. It didn't show. After 5 days I looked around and actually found a customer service rep I could communicate with. He apologized for the problem and said it had been fixed and that the order would show up in 2 days. He added 5 dollars onto my account for my trouble. It didn't show. After 5 days I contacted another rep who apologized and told me that he was personally releasing the order, and that I should expect it in 2 days. He also gave me 5 bucks for my trouble. It didn't show. After about a week I contacted another rep and told him the whole story and he told me that the order was STUCK and that even though it appeared like it could be released, that that he was powerless to release it. He then gave me a full refund plus another 5 dollars and said I should just re-order. By that time I'd found a similar item at Target and decided to just buy that. About two weeks later the item arrived. Apparently the order had come unstuck--even though the rep had canceled the order. Net result: they paid me 30 bucks to buy a 15 dollar item. P.S. I felt so guilty about this I sent Bezos a check. Not.

You're correct. It seems likely Shelley was about to call his wife when Adams came down and that he called her afterwards.

Accounts differ, but it appears there was no "roll call" per se. Employees gathered together on the first floor, and they noticed Oswald was missing. This was alarming to Truly because he'd encountered Oswald just after the shooting. While several other TSBD Building employees did not return from lunch, none of them were believed to have been in the building at the time of the shooting. So there was no APB put out for any of them outside Givens, who had worked on the sixth floor and had a criminal record.

I disagree. Truly encountered one and only one employee while running up the stairs, and that was Oswald. And, yikes, when he looked around 10-20 minutes later, who was missing? Oswald. So of course he says something. The only warehouse worker besides Oswald to not come back inside after the shooting was Givens, and the police put out an APB on him. If they were looking for Givens--who no one recalled being in the building at the time of the shooting--it only makes sense that they would be far more focused on Oswald--who was seen near the back of the building just after the shooting, and then left.

The employees were all milling around so they could be released and Truly realized that Oswald--who he had just seen--was now missing. So he told the police they should check him out. It's not exactly suspicious.

Yikes. When shown the autopsy photos by the ARRB, Riebe deferred to their accuracy. The same goes for Custer, who also told researchers the back of the skull was shattered but in place beneath the scalp. As far as O'Neil, from what I recall he did believe the large head wound was further back on the head than shown in the autopsy photos. But he believed it was at the top of the back of the head, and was the exit for a shot fired from behind. None of these witnesses, and very few of the supposed back of the head witnesses, said there was a large blow out wound on the far back of the head between the ears. So why won't researchers denounce the many books and articles portraying a wound in this location?

No, it's not as simple as people making stuff up. They are ordinary people. They do not document what they said one day and compare it against what they said the next day. So their stories change. When they talk to other people about something, moreover, their recollections get mixed up with what others claim happened, and sometimes things change dramatically. This has been studied extensively by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. While some CTs misrepresent her findings, when one reads her books for oneself one finds that memories are incredibly prone to suggestion. I discuss this extensively on my website. One test, for example, showed that when people are shown a brief glimpse of a person and subsequently asked to identify that person in a line-up, they will usually select the person who looked most like the person they were shown. That's not a surprise. What is surprising, however, is what happens afterward. One group was then asked how certain they were of their identification. As I recall roughly 50% said they were not certain. The other group however, was told afterwards by a policeman at the line-up that they'd correctly picked out the suspect. This group, when asked if they were certain, overwhelmingly said yes. Something like 90%. Well, the clear deduction from this is that our sense of certainty about our recollections is greatly affected by others. So...back to Jenkins and O'Connor. Having met Jenkins, I think he has always told the truth as he saw it. At the 2013 Lancer Conference, in a side room discussion which was unfortunately not recorded, he was asked over and over about JFK's large head wound. And, much to the dismay of those claiming it was on the far back of the head, he said over and over again that it was at the top of the head, and that the back of the head was shattered but in place beneath the scalp. A few years later I met him at another conference--this was witnessed by Matt Douthit--and I pointed out to Jenkins that some of those with whom he was appearing had long claimed the back of the head was blown out and that there was a conspiracy to hide this from the public. He said something like "Yeah, well, what can you do? People are gonna believe what they want to believe." So I was shocked when he later put out a book, with a forward by Mike Chesser, who evidently helped him on the book, claiming the back of the head was blown out. This was in opposition to not only what Jenkins had said at the 2013 conference, and later to me personally, but what he told William Law in the their taped conversations. And yet there he was, reversing himself. Now, sadly, this is not at all unusual. I spoke to Bill Newman at a couple of these conferences as well. And he told me he knew that in his initial statement he said he'd heard two shots, and that he soon thereafter started saying he'd heard three shots, but that he had no recollection whatsoever of changing his mind about this. He said that evidently he originally thought he'd heard two, but now, whenever he replays the incident in his mind, he hears three. He had no explanation. Well, having read tons on this kinda thing, I reminded him that his wife had said, right from the start, that she'd heard three shots. I then asked him if, without his realizing as much, she could have convinced him he'd heard a third shot. He then laughed and asked me if I'm married or something like that, but repeated that he had no idea why his first statement says he heard two shots when he so clearly remembers three.

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.