Duke Lane

Bonnie Ray is definitely deceased, as is Slim Givens. Hank Norman may be alive, but I recall hearing recently that he's not. To the best of my knowledge, Junior Jarman is still around.

... Larry Ray Harris ... took a job at the TSBD, and got to know Jack Daugherty, as part of his research on this case. Larry Ray could not get Jack to talk about 11/22/63. Jack would put his fingers to his lips and go "shh." I believe Larry Ray Harris is also the source for Duke Lane's statement in his post above.

Independent source, former TSBD employee. Corroboration?

Did nobody - does nobody - find it odd that on the one day when something major was to take place that he "would've loved to see" but that his being a "great, big husky fellow" would prevent him from doing so, Jack Dougherty alone among all of the TSBD employees decided to "go back to work" and "get some stock" on the fifth and sixth floors, yet saw nothing and wasn't seen? Or that he was a perfect position to help someone into the building when everyone else went outside, uncharacteristically did not respond to Truly's call for the elevator, and then rode an elevator downstairs downstairs undetected almost immediately after the shooting (with or without passengers)?

I am hesitant to accuse Jack Daugherty on these circumstances alone. Jack was certainly in a position to help plotters in and out of the building, and to fabricate the paper bag, and his personality suggests that he could be susceptible to influence from someone he held in authority (or someone holding a gun to his beloved Mom's aging head). In later years he acted as though he knew something he could not reveal.

What holds me back is this: If I was plotting the assassination, and decided to recruit Jack Daugherty, I would instruct him to say that he caught a fleeting glimpse -- just long enough to make a positive ID -- of Lee Oswald dashing down the stairs a few moments after the shooting. I would also instruct him to testify that when Lee Oswald showed up that morning, he was carrying a bulky package that looked like it could have held a rifle....

Under ordinary circumstances, I probably would too; the question is whether such complexity might not perplex him.

In a perfect conspiracy world, I'd also have made sure that Jack said that he'd seen Oswald on the upper floors while Jack was "getting some stock" on five and six after lunch. The trouble arises if Jack didn't see any of these things and he had to remember details of the web he was asked to weave. "How big was the sack? How was he carrying it? Did he have it the next time you saw him? Where was that? Where had he been? Where on the sixth floor did you see him at lunch time? What was he doing? Did he say anything to you? If so, what? How was he acting? What was he wearing at the time?" etc., ad infinitum.

Better to keep the instructions simple: "Jack, forget everything we're doing here, okay? Tell the cops whatever else you want, but never say a word about this, understand? Never." So whether or not LHO carried something in to work that morning, if Jack didn't see it, it's only because Jack didn't see it, not necessarily because he didn't have anything. If Lee wasn't on the sixth floor at lunch, Jack would be truthful in saying that he wasn't there, which only means Jack didn't see him, not that he wasn't there, etc.

I wouldn't imagine - if this scenario took place - that anyone had only momentary contact with Jack. If his initial role was simply to get shooters in and out, it wouldn't take much coaching, but afterward, just as people accuse WC counsel of "coaching" witnesses (sometimes "extensively") without direct knowledge of when that might have been done other than "before their testimony," what excludes the possibility of coaching by other interested parties who weren't part of the WC? These people weren't under suspicion or surveillance, none were asked to account for their off-work hours and weekends, so nothing excludes that possibility.

Leaving aside the specifics of the case - and the specific case - in any other situation, might we not expect that co-conspirators and accessories might coordinate their stories whenever they knew of a summons? For example, the FBI didn't just show up one day at the TSBD and say "Jack, come with us, we want a statement," and his father suddenly appeared. Maybe he got a day's notice, or a request, "when can you come down?" (I'll ask around about this.) That night, a little dress rehearsal, perhaps? Not outside the realm of possibility.

Nobody we know of knows anything about Jack outside of his work at the TSBD, or his family for that matter. Like ourselves, Jack was probably more than what he was at work: does everyone we work with know how much time we spend on this subject, or have an inkling about all the details we know about the case? Do we know what Jack did, what his politics were, who he hung with (if anybody) after hours? Because he lived at home with mommy and daddy and wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, do we think he simply went home and drooled in front of the television till it was time to go back to work? Maybe read Rolling Readers to get to sleep?

Still, his capacity was at least somewhat diminished from most people's, and even then, sometimes it's best not to try to get someone who doesn't lie easily to lie at all. Tell the truth, but never mention this part of it. Some people can justify - or get others to justify - it not being a "lie" if you simply don't tell it (and don't worry about that "whole truth" thing).

I'm not trying to re-construct Jack in his entirety, or build a complete (and bogus) psychological profile of him. The point is that we know very little about Jack Dougherty and can't rule anything in or out based upon our own particular biases or what we think we might've have told him to do if we were in someone else's shoes since we don't know the realities.

As I'd remarked elsewhere, if this were an on-going investigation (or it was 1963/64) and we had live witnesses to re-interview - and if we wanted a real solution to the case rather than pablum to be fed to the populace - then Jack, along with Hank, Junior and Bonnie Ray and some others, are people whose stories we'd want to re-examine. If that were the case, I don't think any of us would rule out re-interviewing any of these people because we didn't think they fit into our own perception of what happened, or that they didn't do what we'd expect them to do under circumstances we really don't know anything about yet.

From elsewhere:

... By the way, Oswald could not have been the shooter, cause the time span to shoot, hide the rifle and then move to the second floor to meet Baker at the about 70 to 80 seconds after the last shot Baker needed to be there, is too short to be out of breath (sic).

That, of course, is an opinion that cannot be substantiated either way since the only person who can exactly duplicate what Oswald was capable of doing is Oswald himself. If you or I did this and finished gasping and sweating, it has no more bearing on the actual fact than when DC's "personal trainer" guy - clearly in great shape - did it like he was on a short Sunday stroll.

I've always had issues when people use "experts" to "duplicate" what "lucky" Oswald was supposedly able to do: Oswald was not a guy who shot skeet from the hip, and never won an award for marksmanship in his life (unless you count his bare-minimum qualification in the USMC ... in regard to which a friend of mine who was a Marine DI in the early '60s - and who didn't know whose range book he got a copy of - remarked was "p*** poor" and called the shooter "pathetic." Told whose it was, his response was "no _____ way!").

The telling point is not whether or not Oswald could have run the distance, hidden the gun, etc., but rather the proximity of other near-witnesses (and at least one actual witness if not two) who saw and heard nothing. I'm referring, of course, to Junior Jarman, Hank Norman, Bonnie Ray Williams and Jack Dougherty, in that order.

Hank and Junior were downstairs in front of the building - according to both their own testimonies as well as the corroboration of Roy Truly - until they'd heard that the motorcade was on Main Street. They went upstairs via Houston Street and the west elevator, ostensibly (and probably) to the fifth floor.

Bonnie Ray Williams had been on the sixth floor, supposedly alone, until he thought he heard Hank and Junior downstairs, at which point he rode down the east elevator to the fifth floor and joined the other two at the front window, according to both his own testimony and that of Junior Jarman (Hank Norman "couldn't remember" who was there first).

Jack Dougherty said he went "back to work ... getting some stock" on both the fifth and sixth floors, but saw none of the three black men or anyone else while there. He'd said that he would've "loved to see the President," but that he figured that there were so many people at the door - with all of whom he worked - that he "didn't think he'd be able to get out to see him," an odd comment from someone described by Roy Truly as "a great, big husky fellow."

At the time of the shooting, Jack was standing "ten feet west of the west elevator" - right in between the stairways leading up to six and down to four - and nobody ran by him. He was supposedly loading "some stock" onto the west elevator with the door open, hence prohibiting it from being called downstairs by Truly; the east elevator could not operate remotely. Both elevators were on the fifth floor when Truly called up the shaft to "let loose that elevator;" by the time he and Baker arrived on the fifth floor, it was gone. The two went around to the east elevator without Truly even remarking to Baker that the west elevator had left its previous position. They rode past the sixth floor directly to the seventh; the west elevator apparently did not pass them going downward as they came up.

(Despite that Truly didn't think the shots came from within his building, the missing elevator would seem to be something any responsible person would mention to a copy who did think they had: after all, on the chance that the cop was right, couldn't the bad guys be escaping in it? The WC didn't even question him about this.)

These things lead to an "alternative scenario" that seems to have some merit.

First, we must recall that the motorcade was running behind schedule by at least five minutes. We must also consider that anyone planning to shoot at it would want to be in position before its arrival, even if only to compensate for the possibility of its being early. It's clear, on that basis, that the shooter(s) would want to be in place no later than 12:25 and probably at least 5-10 minutes earlier.

By the time Bonnie Ray Williams finished "washing up" in the men's lavatory (use your imagination!), all of his compatriots had already gone outside. This means that he emerged at roughly 12:10; he then went upstairs.

It's possible that he'd either gotten there - too close to the "sniper's nest" window - after someone else, but not before he could be stopped, or it's possible that he was there before them. In either event, if true, he could hardly be let go for fear of his raising the alarm, upsetting the assassination plans, and getting the perpetrators caught. That being the case, it's possible that he was the black man seen by Amos Euins, the "dust" in his hair - which he later shook out - being mistaken as a bald spot.

The man standing at "parade rest" by another witness could conceivably have been Jack Dougherty, whose wartime service was entirely spent at an air base in Illinois guarding planes. Jack could have let someone into the back door and brought them up on the elevator to the sixth floor where Jack - as easily as Oswald - could have constructed the so-called "sniper's nest" to shield them from view. His role would most likely have been as entree to the building and as a "lookout" to shoo people from the sixth floor - or let the shooter(s) know someone was coming (he'd have been there "legitimately") - a job at which he either failed immediately or was pre-empted from fulfilling. While by no means an idiot, he was apparently not bright enough to hold a more active role. It may well be that his failure to prop open the west elevator door is what allowed Hank and Junior to call it and use it to come upstairs themselves.

Bonnie Ray was effectively their prisoner. Perhaps if someone hadn't come up to the fifth floor below them, he might have been "Oswald's" second victim, shot while "trying to prevent Oswald's escape" (certainly not before, since the noise would've alerted people to the men's presence). One can almost imagine the shooter munching on Bonnie Ray's chicken while pondering aloud "what to do about you."

The sound of the west elevator moving again - now carrying Hank and Junior - would have been Bonnie Ray's salvation: he couldn't be shot after "witnessing Oswald doing the shooting" without alerting someone one floor down, which could have been anyone or any number of other witnesses. There was (it seems) only one "extra" bullet, and no certainty of a "single bullet theory" in killing two other employees on different floors. Instead, the "big husky fellow" Jack was instructed to take Bonnie Ray downstairs - on the east elevator - and contain him and whoever else was there.

He may or may not have been armed. Lanky Bonnie Ray Williams was no match for him mano a mano, nor as it turned out were Junior or Hank in particular, but nobody could have known that at that time. Once to the fifth floor, Jack may have told Bonnie Ray to "get over there with your pals and keep your mouth shut" - which he may or may not have done then, and probably didn't later - while Jack took up a position that would prevent any of them from using either the elevators or the stairs to leave the area.

All he'd need do was to open the gate on the west elevator to prevent it from operating, and the east elevator required someone to be in it to move: the only way anyone could get to the top floors was to come up the stairs.

And then the shooting started. And ended. And Oswald - just as Jack said - did not come running down the stairs past him, which he'd have had to do to make the escape conceptualized by virtually everyone, as if it had anything to do with anything.

Some 45 seconds later, give or take a little, Roy Truly shouted up the shaft to let loose the elevators. Jack did nothing. A short while later, while Baker was sticking his pistol into Oswald's gut, the men upstairs were busy hiding the gun and getting ready to leave, maybe walking downstairs to ride the elevator down with Jack; maybe Jack made a final admonishment to the colored boys and went upstairs on the elevator to collect the others.

In either case, they'd probably have gone up rather than down to avoid potentially being seen by whomever was running up the stairs - and making plenty of racket doing so - and either hope or know that the other elevator would be used to finish the climb upwards, hopefully - or expectedly - going past the sixth floor, from which Jack and the shooter(s) could then have ridden down without attracting much if any attention.

Since the elevators could reach the seventh floor, the mechanisms to operate them most likely would have been mounted on the roof in much the same way that the front passenger elevator - which rode only to the fourth floor - had its motors installed on the fifth floor. That would have insulated the noise of its operation - especially if it was moving at the same time as the east elevator - as it went down. The elevators operated both at the same speed, and it was possible for an operator to move the west elevator down two floors - from the sixth to the fourth, or even just back to the fifth - while the east elevator was going up two floors, from the fifth to the seventh.

The only known danger having passed, the men simply walked down the stairs and out, while Jack rode the elevator down to the ground floor. There is evidence to support such an event, inasmuch as Luke Mooney was riding the elevator up to the second floor from the first in time to meet Sarah Stanton at the second floor on her way upstairs to the fourth floor where she worked. During a reconstruction of her actions with the FBI, it was determined that she'd have gotten to the elevator within two to three minutes of the shooting.

The elevator power was apparently out - or someone didn't know to shut the gate more soundly - so Mooney got off and started upstairs on foot. On the way, he encountered two men descending from above who appeared to be police - they were, Mooney said, "plain clothes, like me." Mooney, who is the first police official credited with being on the sixth floor after Baker had descended and left the building, and the first to actually give it even a cursory search (Baker merely scanned the floor), had not gotten up that far yet, and if no police other than Baker had been upstairs between Baker's departure and Mooney's arrival, who were the "plain clothes" guys Mooney saw coming down?

Bonnie Ray and company, meanwhile, had remained on the fifth floor - and given their location beyond a "wall of books" - were apparently not seen by Baker while going in either direction, even whie Baker's white helmet was seen by one of the men as the race around, upward bound, to get onto the east elevator. After a few minutes had gone by, they walked down to the fourth floor, and then down again a few minutes later to the first.

The men "had some trouble getting back to work" over the next few weeks before settling down following the trauma of having apparently been one floor below where the President had been shot from. Bonnie Ray, according to Roy Truly, was the most "particularly superstitious" of the bunch, But then, if it happened as I've described it, wouldn't you expect him to be?

As for Jack, there are some things to consider about him, chief among them not being that he was "mentally retarded." That is a description used only once by Roy Truly, and then only according to an FBI agent's report. Otherwise, Truly had only ever said that Jack had some issues with his "emotional makeup," which he elaborated saying that Dougherty would become more upset than he needed to be if he'd thought he'd done something wrong for Truly, possibly a little too eager to please, but otherwise "of average intelligence for the work he does."

Likewise, Jack's father, who accompanied him to two FBI interviews, said only that Jack had trouble getting his words to match his thoughts (an interesting observation, as if Jack's father knew Jack's thoughts and thus knew the words he spoke didn't match!). This is as close to "retarded" as anyone came to describing Jack. His other "failings" lie in his being 40 years aold and still living at home with his parents; taking a bus to work and not driving; in having no apparent interest in women; and in having a speech impediment.

(Asked about problems with his speech during his testimony, he'd repliced that he had none. "Are you certain?" he was asked, and he said he was. Not apparent in the written transcript, however, is that Jack had a habit of "smacking his lips" between words while talking. This, together with his still living at home, was the cause of ridicule aimed at him by some of the younger employees at the TSBD, one of whom has remarked that "Jack always acted as if he knew something about the assassination that none of the rest of us did." Indeed.)

Furthermore, Jack had access to the building that few other employees - with the probable exception of management and possibly Eddie Piper, the janitor who worked late - had. According to his testimony, he normally arrived at work at 7:00 a.m., an hour before everyone else. Since the cleaning crew was by then long gone, and there was no overnight security, Jack must have had a key to get in to "check the pipes" and perform his other duties that might have made him feel important, but which were effectively non-essential.

Even so, this fact gave Jack access to Troy West's wrapping table, as well as the paper and tape machine apparently used to construct the "bulky package" said to have contained the rifle, or for him to allow someone else access to it. For his part, Troy West said that nobody - not Oswald or anyone else - could or did get to it or borrow any from him at all the time he was at work.

If, then, in fact the package was made from materials only available at the TSBD and not when West was there to observe it (he said he "never" left his work area except to get water for the coffee machine and probably also, as Harold Weisberg observed, to take care of the "necessities of life"), they must have been obtained and possibly (if not probably) put together under the auspices of someone who had access to the building when West was not at work.

That leaves relatively few people, among those employed by the TSBD Company being: Roy Truly, O.V. Campbell, Jack Cason, Bill Shelley and Jack Dougherty (and possibly Eddie Piper). Since the bag cannot definitively be identified as being associated with Oswald - he had no access to the tape machine and paper and did not apparently bring it to Irving with him on Thursday evening (and it was determined that the paper and tape had been cut with a couple of days of the assassination), and two witnesses each said that it was longer than what Oswald did carry to work on Friday morning (and one witness - Jack Dougherty - said that, when Oswald came in the door, he did not observe him carrying anything) - then it is reasonable to conclude that another of these people had to have constructed it, or that it was constructed by someone else whom one of these people provided access to the building during off hours. Or that Oswald might have somehow gained entry when nobody else was there, but there is no evidence to support or warrant that conclusion.

Finally, in keeping with the reasons previously cited that might cause Jack Dougherty to be considered "less than a man" - his lack of combat experience in the midst of WWII, his relatively minor role during that conflict, his early discharge for medical reasons, his lack of interest in women, living at home with his parents, and not driving (much less having a car of his own) - it might be worthwhile to consider whether he was impressionable enough to be recruited to take part in a "patriotic" operation that would elevate him in many people's eyes to a position of great standing ... tho' "nobody but you, me and the boys here can ever know, okay, Jack? But we WILL know, and that's what matters, Jack."

The chance to fulfill such a "patriotic" mission, to finish the "service to his country" that all the other fellows his age had done "back in The War" - and which he ignominiously had not - might have instilled in him the same sense of "pride" that war veterans today feel on memorial occasions, put him "back in uniform" and standing at "parade rest" holding a rifle while guarding a "prisoner" who might conceivably have "blown" the "patriotic" action he was helping with (ridding the country of a "Communist" president?). It hardly seems as if he could have been alone in such a positon, and certainly couldn't have been both "standing guard" on the fifth floor and shooting from a sixth floor window simultaneously.

It is equally unlikely, if not more so, that Jack could have been all over the fifth and sixth floors and seen none of those who were up there - Oswald or whoever the shooter(s) was or were; Bonnie Ray Williams, Hank Norman or Junior Jarman - was not seen by any of those who were questioned about what they saw, and did not see Oswald scurrying down the stairs when there is no conceivable way that he could have avoided having done so in the narrow, confined area between the stairs, the west elevator, and the "wall of boxes" that supposedly kept the other men on the fifth floor from seeing him.

One question remains, and that is the complicity of Roy Truly in such an operation. Jack was unquestionably Truly's "pet" (witness the special job - and concomitant trust - given him in the mornings, and his reactions to possibly displeasing Truly ... and Truly was quick to commend Jack while concurrently acting as his guide and protector during the investigations, yet still downplaying Jack's emotional and mental capacity such that he was viewed as "incapable" of being involved in any way), and it follows that if Truly were involved in the plot, Jack would enthusiastically support him without letting on that he knew anything about it.

Was Truly's yell up the elevator shaft - and ringing the bell that alerted men upstairs that the elevator was wanted - a signal for those upstairs to "hurry up," that the police had come into the building, they had only a couple of minutes to clean up and get out? More to the point, was Truly's failure to point out the missing elevator to Officer Baker deliberate? How could it be anything else? While he later said that he'd thought it was Jack Dougherty who'd moved the elevator (just like I do!), he clearly could not have known that at that time, or that its absence was for any reason not connected with any shooting, even if he believed it did not.

Did nobody - does nobody - find it odd that on the one day when something major was to take place that he "would've loved to see" but that his being a "great, big husky fellow" would prevent him from doing so, Jack Dougherty alone among all of the TSBD employees decided to "go back to work" and "get some stock" on the fifth and sixth floors, yet saw nothing and wasn't seen? Or that he was a perfect position to help someone into the building when everyone else went outside, uncharacteristically did not respond to Truly's call for the elevator, and then rode an elevator downstairs downstairs undetected almost immediately after the shooting (with or without passengers)?

Or that, in light of all this, that we're still discussing whether Oswald could have run down four flights of stairs in 75 seconds?

Why meet at Tenth intentionally, when Oswald or the other avoided the patrol car that tooted the horn for him outside the rooming house?

When you work out the details of the Tippit shooting and the times that people gave, you'll find that it occurred long before Oswald could have gotten there without being in a car, and then only just barely. Tippit was killed within three minutes of Oswald supposedly being at the rooming house, according to the official reconstruction ... which chose to have Tippit "killed" just before Tom Bowley made the "citizen" announcement over the radio, despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary.

That's why it doesn't matter "which way Oswald got to 10th & Patton" because, no matter which way he presumably got there, he couldn't have done it that fast.

...I would suggest that Ruby didn't kill Oswald to be a hero. Ruby killing Oswald was plan "c" (or whatever letter fits) since Oswald wasn't popped at Dealey or in Oak Cliff. The idea of Ruby being the "patriotic american" vanishes when he corrects Wade on the "Fair Play for Cuba" flub, because there is no way a Dallas nightclub owner would ever know of an obscure little group like the FPFC. Ruby is part of the plot to kill Oswald, perhaps not totally happy about it, perhaps even after the fact, but he was directed to do this.

By Harry Olsen.

...I would surmise that this individual was the person monitoring Oswald after the assassination. I cannot believe for a second that if the success of the assassination (for the conspirators) rests on Oswald being killed or captured in short order after the assassination, that they would have left him out of their sights for even a second.

But it appears that they did.

I'd once considered the possibility - and have not entirely discarded it 100% - that LHO was grabbed before getting out of the TSBD, perhaps shortly after the 2nd floor encounter. What argues against this is Geraldean Reid recognizing him as he went through the office pool area, coke in hand; but it doesn't entirely eliminate the possibility since that's the last anyone saw of him for sure: even the reporter who was looking for a phone did not positively identify Oswald who, of course, he would not then have known. Even still, he was at best not far out of the building, where again, nobody saw him afterward.

I thought maybe Mary Bledsoe had not actually seen him, that her avoidance of even looking at him (for kicking him out of her house so unceremoniously, probably, but not because she owed him money, which it seems she did not) might've led her to merely think that she'd seen him after the fact and in the spotlight of the investigation. I went over all of this in considerable detail in a thread that I think had something to do with Oswald's "escape from the TSBD."

After working with an eye toward discrediting her testimony by her getting details wrong, etc., in turn in an attempt to figure out how else Oswald had gotten anywhere, I instead came to the conclusion that she had, in fact, seen the same man - presumably Oswald - who had boarded William Whaley's cab. This was based on the description of the clothing that she had made and which Whaley had corroborated ... not in his testimony, but in a statement made over the weekend.

Whaley had sat next to Oswald for several minutes and would seem unlikely to not recognize him, even despite later claims that his statement was drawn up for his signature even before he'd viewed the line-up, concerns that his having seen Oswald on TV the night before might've influenced his identification, and of course Oswald's demeanor during the line-up ("you could've picked him out just by his yelling at the police," etc.). Facial characteristics aside, LHO was not wearing the brown shirt on Saturday, and it's as likely as anything else that Whaley did notice the shirt, just as he noticed the wrist bracelet.

In any case, Bledsoe alone among the bus riders that afternoon noticed the same shirt that the next person to see Oswald also noticed. Since she'd boarded Oswald for a week and tried - often unsuccessfully - to engage him in conversation, one can presume that she did, in fact, know what he looked like.

His getting onto the bus mid-block (luckily) smacks of an intent to throw off any pursuers he might've had behind him on Elm; his getting off at the last second behind the female passenger only a couple of blocks away and not at street-side, could likewise be interpreted in similar fashion. (I was once taught to do a similar thing, and it does work.)

How his trail might've been picked up again later is an open question. If the whole "car 207" (or 107 or 170) episode went down as described by Earlene Roberts (who was, after all, more intent upon the television than the regularly-antisocial boarder's activities, and was blind in one eye to boot), it doesn't seem likely that an Oswald running from the cops would exit out of the front door where they might still be waiting, much less follow in the same direction a cop car - even one that was not looking for him - had gone; rather, one would think that he'd duck out of a back door through other yards or the alley behind the homes there rather than directly onto Beckley Street.

Being so exposed - he presumably had no way of knowing when or from where a police cruiser might appear - it is difficult to reconcile this individual with "Oswald on the run," "escaping" from the TSBD after having shot the President of the United States, and later shooting another cop with little if any provocation when he appeared on the street. "Cool, calm and collected" at one moment, "wild and crazy" the next.

Back to the point of letting him out of their sight, however, presuming it was indeed Oswald on the bus and in the cab, then he got out of nearly everyone's sight at least for 30 minutes. If he hadn't gotten out of their sight during that excursion, and it was him in the boarding house, then again he was let out of sight and might well have ducked out the back door to get away.

Two things mitigate this perplexity: first, the story of Mack Pate's mechanic seeing Oswald or someone resembling resembling him south on Davis Street in the back seat of a red sedan, and second, the story of ATF agent Frank Ellsworth who, upon seeing Oswald at DPD, thought that he was instead another man who'd been the subject of Ellsworth's investigations into gun-running, and who'd been in custody less than a month earlier on firearms charges. That particular individual was coincidentally one of only two sources of Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition in Dallas.

If Oswald looked enough like that man to at least momentarily fool a federal agent who'd been investigating him, could that man in turn have looked so much like Oswald as to fool people who "knew" him (but could not be considered "close" to him), Mary Bledsoe (who'd known him but a week and who averted her gaze from him, but described his clothing accurately) and Earlene Roberts (who'd known him only a month, was blind in one eye, and paying more attention to the TV than him)?

That not to even mention the possibility - it goes without saying - that the resemblance was close enough such that witnesses to "Oswald's" actions misidentified Oswald for this man?

The possibility exists ... but there remains the question of "where did Oswald go then?"

This whole "second Oswald" scenario plays out quite well, not only with respect to Oswald's shooting practices, etc., but also with the "extra cops in Oak Cliff" scenario. It likewise can be tied neatly into the "Car 10 Where Are You?" scenario involving a cop at the Gloco station, not far from East Jefferson. But those are all for another time....

I would argue that the murder of Tippet played less of a role in getting cops out of Dealey (even though that's a great side benefit) and more of a role in getting cops TO Oak Cliff, because if Oswald isn't killed or captured immediately after the assassination, then there is no patsy, no lone gunman. It is correct that a fire or a bank robbery wouldn't do it, it had to be something of greater importance, and something potentially related to the assassination. The killing of a cop that soon after the assassination could be interpreted by the police as an act of panic and perhaps related to the assassination, which would then result in a large police response to the area.

So the sacrificial killing of Tippit accomplished three things for the conspirators, it brought the police en masse to Oak Cliff to capture/kill the designated patsy, it helped establish the frame up of Oswald as a killer desperate to escape his crime, and it got the cops out of Dealey.

I have no argument with any of that, but might add that the killing of a cop at any time is bound to bring a significant response. It may have been larger and faster under the circumstances - over 40 law enforcement types in OC, MOF, not including constables whose shop was only a few blocks away at 12th & Beckley - but something to be expected nevertheless.

(My cousin, a cop in a city about the size of Dallas, was shot and killed trying to break up a bar fight while he was off-duty. The response was huge.)

Going one step further, since Oswald is the designated patsy I would also suggest that he was monitored by the conspirators at every turn, because the success of this conspiracy had to be the speed of the identification and capture of Oswald, because if Oswald somehow manages to slip out of Oak Cliff, and evades capture, the conspiracy is blown. Oswald can't be given an opportunity to defend himself publicly or slip into the woodwork.

Whatever was supposed to happen with/to Oswald in Oak Cliff did not transpire, and in as such, Tippit had to be sacrificed to get police into the area to apprehend/kill Oswald, perhaps as plan "b".

Here I would only ask what Oswald could've done - or what could've been done to him - that would have effectively short-circuited and ultimately called off the manhunt downtown (or after whatever was to be done by/to him). What "Plan A" could've even come close to accomplishing what "Plan B" obviously did? If Oswald was monitored or "handled" before the Tippit shooting, it was to keep him under control until an auspicious time. See my post above to see how the plan was put immediately to work, even before Oswald could've gotten home to change. There wasn't much time for anything else to "transpire" before instituting a "backup" plan.

I disagree. In order to have the Tippit killing diversion work when needed there would have had to be numerous " Tippit Killers " roaming Oakcliff streets and this even wouldn't have been a guarantee that Tip would have driven a particular street at the needed time. If Tippit's shooting was to be diversionary it would have to be triggered the moment Oswald wasn't gunned down at the Depository. Was it? If there was a plan " B " then someone had to push the button quickly to set it in motion.

Jim, see my post above: within two minutes of the downtown shooting, the regular COC patrol officer signed out to lunch with no protest from dispatch. Within five minutes, an officer from the Southeast Division was sought. Less than a minute after he reported in as being on East Jefferson, Tippit was ordered to move into COC. All the rest of the OC patrols had been ordered out of the area.

According to one former OC cop, it was "common knowledge" at the station that JDT had girlfriend in Oak Cliff living "on the south side of Tenth." According to William Scoggins, who was an habitue of the domino club down Patton Street for lunch, remarked that he'd "seen [Tippit] all the time," and thus paid little attention to him as he passed on Tenth. One of the Davis sisters-in-law apparently saw him enough that she thought he lived two doors from her: "he was shot in front of the hedgerow between the house next door [to us] and the house that he lived in." Jimmy Smith, who lived down the street, made affidavit that Tippit was frequently in the neighborhood and was known as "Officer Friendly."

Is that enough to "guarantee" that JD would go there? Maybe not, but if you take a guy out of his regular beat and put him near his girlfriend with nothing to do but "remain at large for any emergency that comes in" - that is, patrol at your leisure - at around the same time that he may have made a habit of stopping by there, chances might be good that he would. He was last heard from at 12:54, only a couple of minutes from there. Ten minutes later, he was called but did not respond: was it to check to see if he was still alive? Whatever he was being called for - an emergency that came in? - no other patrols were subsequently contacted to handle it.

At 1:04, he might well have been inside the Top Ten Record Shop (whose operators also said that Tippit frequently came by to use the phone ... to call the girlfriend, let her know he was coming or soon would be?) or walking back to his car; it would only take him a minute or so to get to 10th & Patton from there.

If you consider the street encounter in the context of his knowing whomever was walking on the street - it not being Oswald - it makes a lot of sense: here he is, on his way to a tryst, slowing down and pulling over to the curb when someone he knows - and doesn't want to let on that he's heading where he's going to - turns around and looks him in the eye. Oops: caught. Best to make it look like I was stopping anyway cuz I recognized him. A little ways out in the street, still nose-in to the curb. The guy leaning on the car, huh? I can't hear you, get out of the car. Sure, pal, I was pulling over to talk with you anyway, what're brings you to this neighborhood ... in front of the hedgerow just before he got to "the house that he lived in."

I think what might have happened was that Tippit was supposed to meet Oswald on Tenth street and he knew Oswald. Tippit was to kill the murderer of the president and be a hero like Ruby thought he was going to be after killing Oswald. The imposter says through the window of the squad car, " Oswald should be coming down the street any time now. If you want to get out of the car we can wait together and I'll be your witness that he drew first." But when Tip exits the car without alarm and without drawing his gun the imposter gets the drop on him and kills him dead. Then the imposter heads off to lead the cops to the TT so they can kill Oswald there.

So the purpose of killing Tip wasn't diversionary but imparative to lead the cops to Oswald so he could be gunned down in a dark place to give plotters time to construct the story line based on the outcome of events.

It was this imposter who was thrown into the squad car in the alley behind the TT having accomplised his mission. After all, the bad guys knew Oswald was going to be at the TT looking for his handlers not roaming Oakcliff streets.

Long story - short. Diversion ....NO.

Lead the cops to where they knew Oswald was........YES.

I'm not sure I follow the logic here.

If the idea was to have Tippit kill Oswald, why send Oswald to the theater instead of going where he was supposed to have gone to get killed? End result: Oswald is dead. Cop didn't have to die at the hand of someone else so that more cops could be called to kill Oswald somewhere else: same end result either way. If the supposed presidential assassin was dead on a bright street or in a dark theater, what difference would it have made as long as he was dead? What purpose would there have been in killing the cop who was supposed to kill Oswald just so someone else would?

Tippit's murder was something that "hit the cops where it hurt" and guaranteed a strong reaction, numerically speaking. Any cop who didn't feel his job in DP was "essential" - as 40 of them did not - would respond. It might have been seen as "tied in" with the downtown shooting, a result of someone escaping and panicking when confronted by an officer (tho' Jim Leavelle or some other detective at the TSBD at the time said that they didn't have any reason to suspect a tie-in at the time).

There wouldn't have been any kind of a reaction if the police had been called about Oswald sneaking into the theater without paying, but of course lots of other things wouldn't have applied, like Oswald ducking into the shoe store, Brewer having any reason to think him suspicious or to follow him down the street, Julia Postal and her boss being out on the street instead of in the office and box office, no sirens going up and down Jefferson, etc., so Oswald, if he was going into the theater at all, would've paid and no further attention given him (some say he did just that at about 1:00).

Whether cops' attention was diverted from Dealey Plaza or diverted toward Oswald, it is still a diversion. It pulled 40 or more cops out of Dealey Plaza. It got them all - and 20 more sheriff's deputies and an unknown number of constables - into the area where Oswald was. It worked.

Whether those 40+ cops would've done things like search the trunks (boots) of cars in the parking lot or spent more time getting more people's identification or kept other vehicles from leaving the area, who knows? It's moot because they weren't there anymore.

Duke, that's the most intelligent idea I've read all day. And it would explain the witnesses hearing Tippit's shooter saying, "Poor dumb cop." In the context you suggest, the statement makes a lot more sense. He just happened to be the cop who was "hit," when the intention was to kill SOME cop, not necessarily THIS cop. In my mind, having the shooting of a cop occur as part of the plot--which I hadn't previously considered--would have been a stroke of pure evil genius, totally unanticipated by cops and a godsend for anyone looking to escape from police scrutiny in the plaza. ...

Unfortunately, I would have to say that the intent was to kill THIS cop. I don't know whether he'd ticked someone off, if he was just considered someone whose demise wouldn't affect the department significantly, someone sappy enough to fall into the trap, or just what he did to "deserve" to die, but he was most certainly "selected."

I've done a very detailed analysis of the directed and undirected movements of police patrol units immediately before and after the shooting downtown and up to the time of Tippit's death, which was at about 1:05. Nearly every single patrol in Oak Cliff was removed or out of action, save for two, when Tippit and Nelson were reassigned into central OC.

One of those two was William D. Mentzel, who normally patrolled the two COC districts and was at lunch in the district - at the Luby's on Jefferson Blvd, two blocks from the Top Ten Record Shop - who, either despite not knowing of any problems at all in town (he went Code 5 - out to eat - within two minutes of the downtown shooting) tried "repeatedly" to reach police headquarters and finally left (a half hour later!) without finishing his lunch, or who knowing there was a problem in town (why else was he trying repeatedly to reach headquarters while not eating his lunch?), remained inside the cafeteria until after 1:05. As soon as he got on the radio, he - and not Tippit - was assigned to cover an accident at 10th & Davis, where he remained incommunicado until 1:22, not even responding, verbally or physically, to the "Signal 19 involving a police officer" in his very own district.

Absolutely normal behavior on an absolutely normal day.

By 12:34, a patrol from the east part of town had gone missing: dispatch called for him and even asked if anyone else knew where he was. No response. Then he says he's going to be out of his car for a short while, which dispatch acknowledged while asking his location. "East Jefferson," said the patrolman. The only place there is a "Jefferson" anything in Dallas is Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff. Dispatch acknowledged this without asking why he was there, so far from his regular patrol, and without ever suggesting that he make himself available as an additional patrol in the only area of the city that simultaneously was being drained of police resources and would be the only one that required such special attention as to reassign an officer - Tippit - to cover a patrol area other than his own.

Meanwhile, another officer from the Northwest Division, when asked his location, replied that he was at "105 Corinth," and was told to "remain in his district" by dispatch ... despite the fact that "105 Corinth" was also in Oak Cliff and not in his regular patrol some 10 miles away. That location also happened to be about midway along the most direct route Tippit could have taken - and most likely did - from "Kiest and Bonnie View" to "8th and Lancaster," and it just so happened that this officer radioed that he was going to go downtown only a short time after being told to remain in his district ... at just about the time Tippit would have driven by 105 Corinth based on his going at about the speed limit after being told, at Kiest and Bonnie View, to report to COC. There is no evidence - including any report by him - that he actually went downtown, and he was not reminded to stay in his own district despite having been told to do so about five minutes earlier, nor - there being only one 105 Corinth in Dallas (in Oak Cliff) - was he told to reinforce the depleted patrols in that area.

Remember: it was on account of dispatchers' supposed realization that they'd been pulling cops out of that area that Tippit was ostensibly sent into COC to begin with. Interestingly, too, as soon as they'd "realized" that and gave Tippit his orders, the very next thing they did was to assign another Oak Cliff patrol into downtown.

Oak Cliff was not the only part of town from which resources had been drained, whether by direction of dispatchers or their own volunteering to go downtown, yet it was the only one that anyone felt had a need for special coverage "in case of a major accident or robbery." Apparently, it was a well-known fact that people who shoot at Presidents only flee to the south since no other part of town was put on any kind of similar "alert." And - I'm sure quite coincidentally - Officer Mentzel was the only patrol officer in the entire city who was given a lunch break at that time, within just a couple of minutes of the shooting of the President of the United States less than five miles from his patrol district. If dispatch didn't mean to give him a lunch break (despite their acknowledgement of it), they also did not try to contact him at any time in the next half-hour until such time as he called in himself.

Tippit, incidentally, was called and reassigned within one minute of the time - two transmissions after - the first officer reported that he was (in position?) on East Jefferson. Why would Tippit be needed to report to COC when there was another officer already in COC, or at least a whole lot closer?

A game was afoot.

Among other things this image appears to show the striped coat lady from the Hughes aftermath frames.

I'd have to agree, even if Bronson's woman does seem to have a slightly different cut to her hair ... which may only be a function of resolution, etc.

It's more difficult to imagine two women in the same block wearing the same (or that-similar) coat than it is to imagine that the lady in Bronson simply walked across Houston Street to follow the progress of the motorcade.

It's interesting to note that there are at least three traffic cops visible on Main, including the one with the yellow slicker. Never gave much thought to what the cops assigned to each intersection would be doing (besides stopping traffic), and holding the crowd back seems to be as likely a duty for them as any other.

Sheriff's deputies aren't as obvious as one would have thought.

Proof of Nixon complicity to right of the Courts building. (grin)

Just ran across this on the net, reproduced verbatim:

Interesting.

... What I find curious is that Tippett was killed within minutes of the announcement that JFK had died. Was that the incentive for his death, needing to "prove" that Oswald had the capacity to murder JFK, because he had the capacity to kill a cop?

One would think that, a President having been killed in public in a major city in a small park surrounded largely by railroad yards, that an intense police investigation of that area would result in the eventual discovery and apprehension of one or more of the shooters. How long would it be, under the expected circumstances, before police would start prying open the trunks (boots) of the cars in the parking lot, concerns for damage to private property be damned? There were nearly 100 cops in that three-acre parcel after the shooting; one would imagine that it probably wouldn't be long before one of them got bored and did something smart.

So, what do you do to create a diversion significant enough to get half-a-hundred cops away from the area? And how do you make sure that "someone is picked up quickly to throw the public off?" A fire's not going to do it, nor will a bank robbery. A riot might, but where are you going to get so many people riled up over nothing so quickly? Kill a cop on the other hand ...?

The fact is that, prior to JFK's shooting, DPD dispatch had pulled more than half of the cops out of the Oak Cliff area, and continued to do so even after they supposedly "realized they were draining resources" from the area (the rationale for having sent Tippit into central Oak Cliff). No other area of town was so depleted, either voluntarily or by direction.

There were no less than two on-duty cops who were in Oak Cliff immediately after the downtown shooting, both of whom so informing the dispatcher, one along the route Tippit took from his normal beat to "central Oak Cliff," and the other at the end of that route.

The officer who normally patrolled the district where Tippit was shot was in the district, at lunch in Luby's cafeteria on Jefferson Boulevard, the only on-duty patrol officer who took lunch at the time, in his case less than five minutes after the downtown shooting. Despite knowing about the emergency, and despite moving so many OC cops into the downtown area, dispatch okayed the break.

JD Tippit was "part of the conspiracy," an unwitting part: he was the diversion. It worked.

Not to pre-empt, but - how late did Bonnie Ray Williams sit in that window area with his chicken lunch before anyone else occupied that space? Was Williams really feeble-minded and freaked-out by the whole affair, as Roy Truly claimed to the WC, or was he a shill for the conspirators, managed by Truly and Byrd?

I bring it up b/c I saw "JFK" again recently, and the script has Williams eating there until 12:10 p. m. Isn't there one street-level sighting of two figures, one dark-complected, one balding, in the sixth-floor window before shots were fired?

That's really a key question, David.

Bonnie Ray testified that he'd only been upstairs a couple of minutes and, as I recall, said that he'd been up there as late as 12:20. The WC estimated his being there "as late as" maybe 12:10, but it presumed that he'd gone upstairs immediately after washing up for lunch.

In a sense, that's true, but the reality is that, by the time he'd emerged from the wash room, all of his compatriots had already eaten their lunches and gone outside. If you piece together all of their testimonies, you'll find that Bonnie Ray didn't even come out of the wash room until about 12:10. (Use your imagination.)

BRW and Junior Jarman both testified that BRW had come to the fifth floor after Jarman and Hank Norman had gotten there (Norman said he "wasn't sure" who was there first). Hank and Junior were outside in front of the building - and were seen there by Roy Truly there, along with Slim Givens, who'd left the group and walked a block east to meet up with a friend of his who ran the parking lot at Elm & Record, his departure also noticed by Truly, as was Hank and Junior's.

Hank and Junior testified that they left the front of the building when they "got word" that the motorcade was on Main Street, presumably either by hearing over a police radio, or catching the "buzz of the crowd" after someone else had heard it over the radio. That was some time between 12:22 and 12:26, probably more toward the latter time, which was the first time "Main Street" was mentioned on the parade channel (DPD2).

They walked around the back of the building via Houston Street, saw the east elevator not there, went around and rode the west elevator up to the fifth floor. This took from one to two minutes, putting them onto the fifth floor at some time after 12:25, possibly as late as 12:28. Bonnie Ray Williams was still on the sixth floor at that time.

That being true, and the movements people on the street had noticed - Rowland, Euins, et al. - likewise being valid, based on where BRW said he was sitting while eating lunch, there is no way that he could not have noticed the activity. It is likewise unlikely, given his proximity, that he woudn't have noticed the activity of even one man, even if that man was trying to be surreptitious.

It is also unlikely that anybody who was on the sixth floor would not notice Williams.

So, if Oswald was on the sixth floor and Williams was on the sixth floor, and each knew the other was there:

• why did Oswald let him go (might Williams not have raised the alarm?);
  
• why did Williams not raise the alarm; and
  
• once Oswald was dead, why didn't Williams simply say that he'd seen Oswald with the gun on six?
  

The answers to those are that BRW didn't see Oswald on six; that someone had to have watched over him to ensure that he and his pals on five didn't raise the alarm; and that BRW still feared whoever it was that he had seen on six.

Truly characterized the behavior of all three men as being unusual in the weeks afterward, with BRW being the most "superstitious" of them. No great surprise in that, is there?

... And the day after the newspapers published the motorcade route, two rifles were brought into the TSBD by Warren Caster. The same day those rifles were brought in, a Dallas Police patrol observed men on the knoll behind the picket fence with rifles.

We know Oswald was working all day that day, so it couldn't have been related. That one of the rifles Caster brought in was a "sporterized Mauser" is not material since nobody ever used the word "sporterized" in describing any "7.65 Mauser" in the TSBD.

One can only hope that the men with the rifles behind the fence were not driving a green Rambler station wagon, because if so, Ed Hoffman saw them and can probably identify them.

Also, a correction RE:

... What's noteworthy is the fact that the return trip was supposed to have been via Harry Hines Boulevard

Anyone who's been to Dallas and spent a little time there knows that Harry Hines is a thoroughfare that, then as now, is not one that anybody would think was any more or less appropriate for a Presidential motorcade than Industrial Boulevard was or is. While much is made of the fact that the parade didn't continue on Main Street because nobody thought it appropriate for JFK to through an area full of factories and warehouses, it seems nobody had a problem with him going through another area full of used car dealers, strip joints and pawn shops. ...

What I said of Harry Hines is and was true ... however, not that far south on Harry Hines. I was thinking that Mockingbird intersected farther up (I was actually thinking of Walnut Hill, don't know why), which does fit the bill. The south portion of HH is commercial/industrial, but mostly manufacturing and set back from the road.

I was leafing through old issues (is there any other kind?) of The Third Decade and came across an article by Timothy Cwiek in Volume 3, Issue 2 (January 1987) called "The Motorcade Route Stories that Never Were." Accompanying his article, reprinted on the back cover, were newspaper articles from both the Dallas Times Herald and Morning News detailing the route in print (published in the WC evidentiary volumes as Commission Exhibits 1362 and 1363, respectively).

CE1362, published on November 19, indicates that the Dallas route was "revealed," indicating that:

In this, there is no specific mention of the dog-leg turn on to Elm, but then, there is also no mention of any other particular turn: but why would there be? Only if someone was aware of the 120° turn onto Elm might it have raised an eyebrow, but then probably only if someone was thinking about Presidential security, which most people probably wouldn't have been (although, clearly, somebody was!).

CE1363 was also published on November 19 according to the handwritten notation on that document. Where the Times Herald said that the motorcade would be "turning back to Elm at Houston," the News wrote:

A couple of things stand out in these articles. First, while the Times Herald indicates that Kennedy would have a "three hour visit to the city," it does not even note when that visit will begin. The News, on the other hand, indicates that the President's plane was due to land at Love Field at "about 11:30 a.m." For what it's worth, no time for Kennedy's planned departure is given in either article.

While we all must know that JFK certainly intended to get back to Air Force One after lunch, we don't often give much thought to how he was intended to get back there since, after all, he never did go back ... at least, not alive. What's noteworthy is the fact that the return trip was supposed to have been via Harry Hines Boulevard

Anyone who's been to Dallas and spent a little time there knows that Harry Hines is a thoroughfare that, then as now, is not one that anybody would think was any more or less appropriate for a Presidential motorcade than Industrial Boulevard was or is. While much is made of the fact that the parade didn't continue on Main Street because nobody thought it appropriate for JFK to through an area full of factories and warehouses, it seems nobody had a problem with him going through another area full of used car dealers, strip joints and pawn shops.

Interesting, isn't it?

Here's an example of what I'm talking about...to those who weren't of his generation, this might reek of vindictiveness, since the accused is 89 years old and already in poor health ....

I think the Birmingham church bombing case of September 1963 might be instructive in this, inasmuch as it wasn't until the '80s or '90s when the last of the suspects was finally convicted and sentenced, at least one having died in prison. They, too, were of advanced age and in poor health: so what? Those they killed were young and in great health: the perps' infirmity does not mitigate Justice, and if anything, the vics' youth demands it. The disinterest of a later generation does not absolve them.

That speaks to Birmingham as well as Demjanjuk and whoever killed the 46-year-old President and a 39-year-old cop. My two cents worth ....

Duke, some good points as usual, it wont surprise you to learn I dont agree with most of them (I think you know my stand on Tippit) but excellent points to consider none the less.

Since you disagree with "most" of my "good points as usual," which one(s) and why?

• Hank Norman and Junior Jarman did not go upstairs until after the motorcade was announced as being on Main Street at or after 12:22 or 12:26; and/or
  
• Bonnie Ray Williams went to the fifth floor after Hank and Junior had already arrived there; and/or
  
• That means BRW was on the sixth floor until 12:25 to 12:28; and/or
  
• Jack Dougherty was standing "ten feet west of the west elevator" at the time of the shooting and thereafter; and/or
  
• Jack likely did hear the three men running across the fifth floor after the shooting; and/or
  
• Jack was standing directly in the path Oswald would have had to have taken if he'd come down from the sixth floor; and/or
  
• Jack didn't see Oswald pass within a couple of feet of him, ergo either
  • Jack was not where he claimed to be (and if so, where was he?); or
    
  • Oswald did not pass Jack; and/or
    

  [*]The freight elevator was a likely means of escape by whoever did do the shooting if Oswald didn't?

Clearly, you have reasons why you disagree ...?

Duke, some good points as usual, it wont surprise you to learn I dont agree with most of them (I think you know my stand on Tippit) but excellent points to consider none the less.

But of course, I expected no different! We can always disagree on what the facts mean, but there's no doubt that what I've described are at least that: facts. Like the emptying of Oak Cliff, the three "extra" patrols in Oak Cliff, and the regular guy at lunch. There's no getting around those. What we might think they mean ...?

... I am not saying this is what happened, merely proposing an alternative way in which the shooting could have occurred, one that any decent law enforcement agency should have investigated thoroughly to attempt to rule it out even if they thought Oswald did it.

One of the axioms propounded by Sherlock Holmes is that "one should always develop alternative theories in order to provide against them." Imagine that a novelist could figure that out while cops sometimes can't!

John, surly the police had more than a reasonable excuse to shoot down Oswald in the theater if that had been their intention/mission, he did try to shoot an officer there. You seem to implicate the whole DPD.

It can be shown that immediately following the downtown shooting, dispatchers systematically emptied Oak Cliff of police patrols, even after supposedly assigning Tippit to central Oak Cliff because they "realized" that they were draining resources from the area. There were also at least three other on-duty officers in Oak Cliff outside of their regular patrol areas and known to be there by dispatchers, not counting the officer who was regularly assigned to central Oak Cliff and was the sole DPD officer who'd gone to lunch - and allowed to go to lunch - immediately after the shooting took place.

That suggests a set-up where Tippit is killed to divert the attention of DPD from Dealey Plaza to Oak Cliff, where Oswald happened to live and be captured, which, it might be noted, was a highly successful diversion if so, taking more than half of the 85-or-so cops who were in Dealey Plaza out of Dealey Plaza. More than 60 law enforcement officers were involved in the hunt for the cop-killer; less than 40 remained on the scene of the President's assassination.

Presuming the truth in that, can you not implicate certain elements of DPD in Tippit's shooting, and if that's the case, was it sheer coincidence that they decided to kill Tippit on the heels of Kennedy's shooting? If they weren't somehow part of the first shooting, why would they have done the second? That Dallas cops were part of the second is demonstrable, so how then can they be unconnected to the first?

That clearly doesn't implicate the entire 1500-man department.

As to a reasonable excuse to shoot Oswald in the theater, it could easily be that the pistol was brought into the theater and was intended to make as if Oswald had shot Nick McDonald when in fact the gun was in someone else's hand: one of the officers near the scuffle - and after the snap - commented that someone told Oswald to let go of the gun and he responded "I can't," as if perhaps someone else was forcing him to hold it.

It could easily have been accomplished and, if certain DPD officers were willing to gun down a fellow officer once to divert attention from the assassination scene, it's not a large stretch to imagine that they'd be willing to cut down another one or two in the theater to ensure that the sole suspect - as Oswald surely would have become, even as he did - died in a hail of gunfire after opening fire on officers himself.

Jack Ruby probably would've sighed with relief if things had gone according to plan.

... But since the secretary who saw him there on the way out, didn't see him on the way in, as she should have, then how did Oswald get to the vestibule without going through the offices? The scematic drawing of the Second Floor of the TSBD shows that the south door to the vestibule also leads to a hall with mens and womens restrooms, which are depected as all one room, when we know there must have been a wall between them.

... One of the black guys on the fifth floor said he had "washed up" between eating in the first floor lunchroom and going outside and walking a block to a parking lot where he knew the parking lot attendant. Then he walked back to the TSBD, walked around the back and went up to the Fifth Floor in time to witness the assassination. Where did he "wash up"? The second floor men's room?

In the first instance, you're referring to Geraldean (Mrs. Robert A.) Reid, who had been outside watching the parade in front of the building, standing with Roy Truly and O.C. Campbell. She testified that "all the other girls" who worked for her had already gone outside by the time she had - she was the last one out - so there was nobody in the office to witness Oswald walking through the office space if that's what he did. More on that in a second.

You are also confusing Charles "Slim" Givens, who went to the parking lot at Record & Elm, as being one of the men who'd gone to the fifth floor; he did not. He was out in front of the building with Junior Jarman and Hank Norman, but when they left to go upstairs after hearing that the motorcade was on Main, Givens walked across Houston Street and up the block to Record Street to see his friend at the parking lot. When he got there, the two of them walked the block over to Main in time to see the parade pass, and were walking back to Elm when Givens heard the shots, saw the commotion down Elm, and returned to the TSBD. He did not go inside.

Two notes on timing here: I've walked the distance from the TSBD to Record to Main and then back; it takes about 90 seconds at a "normal" walk. If Givens had made it back from Main as far as Elm on Record - approximately half the distance - then he was at Main Street approximately 45 seconds to a minute before the shooting, i.e., at 12:29. If they didn't have to wait for the parade to pass - got there just ahead of it - he'd have been at Record & Elm the first time at about 12:28 and, if he didn't have to wait for his friend to collect himself before walking to Main, he left Elm & Houston 45 seconds before that, or around 12:27.

The point to that is that it is within the time that "word came around" that the parade was on Main Street, which last came over the police radio at 12:26, and first at around 12:22. The above reconstruction gives Givens one to one-and-a-half minute's leeway in getting from Elm & Houston to Main & Record after the last "Main Street" broadcast, very do-able and supporting Junior Jarman's statement that they'd left to go upstairs at that time, as well as Roy Truly's statement that the men were in front of the building until "shortly" before the parade arrived. Truly, in fact, specifically remembered Givens crossing Houston and walking up Elm.

If "the word" they heard about the parade was the 12:22 broadcast, it is even more do-able for Givens to have made that walk, but still supportive of the fact that Hank and Junior didn't get to the fifth floor until no earlier than 12:24 and possibly as late as 12:28. Bonnie Ray Williams arrived after them, meaning he'd been upstairs until that time.

The second note is that Mrs. Reid's return to her office was also timed during the March 20 "reconstruction." According to her testimony and the apparent concurrence of counsel Belin, it took her two minutes from the time of the last shot to the time she saw Oswald, who was then just stepping into the office space, coke in hand, after which he walked through and left, so this was clearly after the lunchroom encounter (and, therefore, the lunchroom encounter was over within two minutes of the shooting), bringing us full-circle to the question:

... But since the secretary who saw him there on the way out, didn't see him on the way in, as she should have, then how did Oswald get to the vestibule without going through the offices?

We now know that there is no reason that she "should" have seen Oswald prior to her own post-Baker encounter with him. Seen or unseen, this doesn't mean that Oswald didn't go through the office space, only that nobody saw him do so because there was nobody there. This gives us three options on how Oswald got to the vestibule and lunchroom:

• He went through the office space, but it being empty, nobody saw him. It is possible that he did so on the basis of getting change for the coke machine as well as for the bus ride home later (since he must've had change for the machine) or simply because it was easier to cut through the office diagnonally than to have taken the second option,
  
• He took the hallway around the office space, which would explain why, if there had been anyone in the office, the didn't see him. But nobody was there, so either way, he'd have been unseen; or
  
• He took the back stairway up to the second floor and went in before Baker and Truly came up behind him, possibly sticking his head into the office to see if Mrs. Reid was there so he could get change.
  

It is not so that the only direction that Oswald could have come from to enter the vestibule doorway from the stairwell is from above; he could as easily have come from below and gotten there moments before B&T. Indeed, given the fact that he said he'd had lunch on the first floor, and every indication is that he'd had it in the domino room, then his taking the back stairway up to the second floor makes better sense.

The reason is that the domino room was at the northeast (back right) corner of the building while the stairway was at the northwest (back left) corner, that is, both in the back of the building. It would have been a walk straight across the rear of the building to the stairwell, rather than to walk to the front of the building and then have to walk back to the rear of the building; that is, taking one leg of a triangle rather than the other leg and the hypotenuse.

In doing so, he would not have been seen by Troy West, who ate (according to his testimony, he was very much a creature of habit) facing away from the rear of the building, the elevators and stairway, or by Eddie Piper, watching the parade out of the front window. Pretty much everyone else was outside watching; at least, I can't recall any of the other first-floor workers who were still inside.

If Oswald went that way, he might've done so even before the shooting and been in the stairwell when it happened, meaning that he might well not have heard it. Going up the stairs and into the vestibule would mean that several seconds later - maybe even 30, 60 or 90 - when B&T got to the door, it was already closed. Even if they'd only just missed each other going up the stairwell or whether either door had finished closing, the larger point is that Oswald's actions inside the room were not consistent with someone escaping from anything.

Even leaving aside his calm demeanor (and even whether or not he already had a coke in his hand by the time Baker confronted him), the idea that someone had ducked into the room to avoid detection is belied by the fact that he allowed himself to be in a position to be seen. I mean, if you're going to hide in a room, would you stay erect or duck down so you wouldn't be seen, or maybe sit at a table rather than walk across the room in front of a door with a window?

I think we've established fairly well that Oswald could not have come down the stairs and pass within five feet of Jack Dougherty without being seen, which he had to have done if he'd been on the sixth floor. If not, then how else he got there is pretty well moot, but if we felt there was a need to figure that out, there are other possibilities including that he went up the stairs only a short time before Baker & Truly did; down is not the only direction he could've been taking to get into the lunchroom from the stairs.

Oh! One other thing:

... One of the black guys on the fifth floor said he had "washed up" between eating in the first floor lunchroom and going outside and walking a block to a parking lot where he knew the parking lot attendant. Then he walked back to the TSBD, walked around the back and went up to the Fifth Floor in time to witness the assassination. Where did he "wash up"? The second floor men's room?

Leaving aside who "washed up" (virtually everyone did, or said they did, and "wash up" might well include a break to answer the call of nature, or as Harold Weisberg put it, to "take care of life's necessities"), the second floor served as the "executive suite" for the TSBD Company. Much ado is made of the domino room, for example, being where "minority" workers ate - including blacks and hispanics, and as someone said, "the lone Marxist" - the reality is that it was where the laborers ate, regardless of color or national origin or political beliefs.

The same held true of the washroom: management did not mingle with labor and vice-versa, even at the most basic level. Face it: suits generally don't like to have to wash up - or eat! - next to some sweaty, dusty guy who's been slinging boxes of books all morning, and for one of the laborers - and probably especially one of the black laborers - to have used the "executive washroom" would've had him sticking out like a sore thumb.

So now Duke, plays the Devils' Advocate and speculates in the heels of Jean Davis and Dale Myers, that Oswald actually got down to the Second Floor earlier than the WC has him getting there, and goes through that door, and doublebacks and ducks and plays hide and seek with Baker and Truley.

Gosh, I feel like Ronald Reagan in the debates saying "there you go again." Where do you see that I said anything about Oswald getting "down to the second floor?" I think I've been fairly consistent in saying that Oswald wasn't upstairs at all. Why do you keep trying to set that straw man back up?

What are the possibilities of desending from Sixth Floor - Stairs - Two Elevators - and that's it, right? With all the talk about the elevators, how come we haven't seen one photo, ever, of either of the elevators?

Umm ... Bill? Because in the official version, "the assassin" came down the stairs? In that scenario, what role did the elevator(s) play? So why take pictures of them? And for that matter, have we ever seen photos of the entire stairwell, or even a long segment of it? Why not? This is a non-sequitur.

And there was an eleveator for people right by the front door that went up to fourth or fifth floor. Could the Sixth Floor Shooter have taken the stairs down a few flights then took the other elevator?

The elevator shaft went up to the fourth floor (CE487 shows an outline on the fifth floor for the elevator shaft, noting "no opening to elev. shaft on this floor"), but I've never heard that it actually travelled any higher than the second floor. Maybe you have new information on this? Nothing would, of course, have prevented someone from walking down the front stairs - which I think also ended at the second floor, but I'm not 100% certain of that offhand - but I would think it would be a little riskier to come down from upstairss right inside the entrance of a building police might well be expected to be entering from that direction than from the rear.

But if that's what happened, who did Luke Mooney see on the back stairs? That's really the crux of the biscuit. As it turned out, if the guys that Mooney saw were shooters, then they did end up encountering police (actually, a sheriff's deputy) anyway, but apparently drew little notice: enough only that Mooney remembered them months later when he testified, but not enough that he'd thought they had anything to do with the shooting, either at the time or later.

Further to an earlier question, it is correct that Mooney had discussed an officer "Victory" (Vickery) and possibly another deputy also entering the building when he did, but if either of them were who Mooney encountered on the stairs coming down, first, why were they coming down when they'd entered the building with the intent of going up to the top (as Vickery did, according to Mooney, so who was the second "officer in plain clothes?"), and second, why didn't he recognize them as who they were?

Mooney did not say that Vickery and another officer went up, and that a couple of minutes later, Vickery and the other officer came down. Given that he knew who they were, you'd think he'd have acknowledged their identity if he knew them and especially if he'd just discussed them. But no, what he said was:

Does that sound like he knew them? "I believe they were deputy sheriffs" is not what I'd call a firm identification, and certainly not of men he knew by name.

But meanwhile, here we have one of the very first officers to enter the building - the one credited with being the first to go out onto the sixth floor proper - saying that "other officers" were already coming down from above, when nobody other than Marrion Baker had gone up yet.

... Truly was called back to testify under oath before the Warren Commission attorney and asked only one question - whether the door had an automatic closing mechanism. It did and thus the door closed automatically, though slow and did not slam, so if Oswald did go through that door, and was seen through the window by Baker, then Truly certainly would have seen him too, and the door would have been slowly closing behind him. What difference does it matter if Oswald went right or left? In either case he should not have been seen by Baker if the door was even open a little, and he had made the turn. So Oswald most certainly was walking through the vestibule from right to left, south to north, and didn't go through that door or descend the steps from the sixth floor.

To play the Devil's advocate, "would have" and "should have" are as different from each other as "might have" or "could have" is from either of them, and the last two are as close to reality as we can get in this or virtually any other instance.

Even where Truly "might have seen" Oswald - or even "certainly would have" - need to be qualified by adding "if he was paying attention," which he needn't have been doing, per se; that is, it was part of the usual activity in the building and not worthy of notice. Such "usual activity" could also have caused Truly to overlook something that, under other circumstances, might've been very noteworthy.

Likewise, it's also possible that only because of a confluence of events - a true "coincidence," or "co-incidents" - that allowed Baker to see what he saw. If Oswald, say, had gone by where Baker had seen him a second or two earlier or later - or if Baker had turned his head or been at a slightly different angle - it's just as possible that Baker wouldn't have seen him at all. That would've given Oswald "all the time in the world" to get downstairs because nobody would've known he was in the second floor lunch room so soon after the shooting.

Undoubtedly, there would've been another explanation of how he'd gotten past Baker and Truly, and my guess is that it would've been the elevator, exactly as I'd described it, and Jack would've been assumed to have been "getting some stock" upstairs to explain where he was (instead of his using the elevator himself).

Truly may even have noticed the door and/or Oswald subconsciously, but just as subconsciously (or unconsciously) brushed off both as being "normal," the actual event not registering with him at all. Point being that Truly not seeing (or noticing) the door or Oswald has no bearing on the fact that Baker apparently did.

Also, with Truly having been ahead of Baker - he'd gone up a few stairs before noticing that Baker wasn't behind him - it's quite possible that, either because a door hadn't closed far enough or Oswald hadn't been in a position to be seen seconds earlier, or both, Baker saw something that Truly would not have been able to.

The damper on the door merely explains why neither heard the door slam, which might also be explained by the fact that it was already closed. If Oswald was truly in a hurry and didn't want to be seen, it would seem to me that he'd have ducked down below where he could've been seen and pulled the door closed faster than it normally would have ... or never gone through the lunchroom door at all, or at least stayed around the corner inside the lunch room where he wouldn't be seen by passers-by.

Hey Duke, Why not start a thread on the identity of the Sixth Floor Sniper?

Hey Bill, largely because every time I start a thread that diverges from your nebulous claims, you accuse me of trying to confuse the issue?

Regardless of all the speculation of who it was, I still want to establish, without a doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald, visibly seen in the vestibule of the Second Floor Lunchroom by Baker at 90 seconds after the last shot, can be eleminated as a Sixth Floor Shooting suspect if he did not go through that door. And from all indications, he did not.

I think the point has largely been conceded. Any attempt to go beyond that point has met with your derision. Not what you'd call a conversation-starter, eh?

If it can be shown that someone else must've done it, then the whole argument about how LHO didn't do it is a non-starter.

Those who claim to keep an open mind about such things, must now admit that Lee Harvey Oswald, who Gary Mack proclaims as the only suspect, is now not a suspect at all.

And those with a truly open mind (no pun intended) will consider that there are other suspects than LHO. Instead, we get the straw-man argument that I'd "speculated" that "JFK was killed by a black janitor while a retarded guy was the lookout."

If you can cite where I said that, by all means, please do. I won't be holding my breath.

I offer PROOF of FACTS about the ground-pounders; you'd like to discuss who the masterminds were. Fair enough. When you're able to put Curtis LeMay on the sixth floor of the depository building, I'm sure we'd all like to hear more. Until then, your "primary suspects" are a lot more speculation than anything I've suggested, which never even hinted at the identity of the shooter(s) except to show that Lee Oswald wasn't him, or one of them.

I've proven your point and you've derided mine. Do you think that could have any bearing on why it's taken 45 years to make so little progress? Or why so many people think we're wierd and obsessed?

Nobody was ever able to put Nixon in the Watergate either. Since he wasn't there, does that mean that Hunt and Sturgis and the Cubans couldn't have been the perps? If Nixon was behind it all, the others aren't even worth talking about, right? They weren't "players."

You find the generals by identifying the grunts, not the other way around.

Duke,

I assume you are attributing some of your above speculations to me - about "accomplaces are for amaterurs anyway" and all the junk about "cloaks of invisiblity," none of which I said.

I said in a previous post that speculating that Dougherty was a "lookout" and one of the negros was a "shooter" was, I never said a thing about "acomplaces," and I think I said a "lookout" would be "rinky dink," and that we shouldn't speculate too far beyond what we know to be facts.

You want to speculate about Dougherty, feeble minded and retarded lookout, and a black guy shooting Oswald's rifle, go right ahead. ... I don't think that JFK was killed by a black janitor while a retarded guy was the lookout.

Bill,

This explains much: you don't read what's actually written unless it catches your eye, because I never once suggested a black man was a shooter, and you'll have to admit that a "lookout" is indeed an "accomplice." I don't think I even suggested that I thought it was done by two "lone nuts" rather than the supposed one, which is what being "killed by a black janitor while a retarded guy was the lookout" describes.

As to why you'd think that "real killers don't use lookouts" (it would be "rinky dink"), I haven't a clue. Guess I'd rather get caught by surprise and be the only one there in the event that three men arrived in the shooting area, alone or together, while I was hunkered down at a corner window. Who wants anyone to watch their six anyway?

Jack's "feeble-mindedness" and "retardation" are attributable only to Roy Truly, who can't be ruled out of having had something to do with the whole thing; otherwise, all you've got is a Secret Service agent's impression that Jack was "confused" about dates and times, and Jack's father telling the FBI that he sometimes had trouble putting thoughts into words. Jack was, after all, lucid and intelligent enough to be entrusted with the keys to the building, and was the first one there every day. Does that spell "opportunity" to you?

Incidentally, people who knew Jack don't use those words to describe him.

My speculation as to what happened is based on the facts that my three main suspects - LeMay, Byrd and Collins - all three very good and close friends, own the building, control the radio communcations on AF1 and oversee the CIA/DOD maritime operations involved in the "contingency plans for a coup in Cuba" and Northwoods, both of which are directly connected to what happened at Dealey Plaza and Oak Cliff. If you read how the maritime operators prepared for their missions to Cuba, then you will understand how such an operation is conducted.

While certainly those three men could have had a hand in the deal, I hardly think that any of them had a gun in their hands on Friday afternoon. I'm looking for the ground-pounding grunt, not the general behind the lines.

Maybe the floor crew as really an assassination team, who had served in the military together, and maybe Duke's speculation is correct, but that's all it is, speculating, and you can't take it to court.

Certainly, as Peter points out, Duke has posted the extremely pertinent question that everyone should try to answer: If Oswald wasn't the Sixth Floor Sniper, then who was he?

We know he was a white, male, 25-35 years old, 5 foot 8-11, 160 pounds, wore a white shirt, had a male pattern bald spot on the top of his head (like Lovelady), and probably had a good excuse to be in the building - either working there or a cop.

Not all facts can be taken to court, but that doesn't make them any less facts. Your description does not match any given by anyone who saw someone in the window, including Amos Euins' from whom presumably came the "pattern bald spot" which he made a point of after saying that he didn't say the man he saw was white. Sometimes, when looking at the forest, it's kind of difficult to see what species of trees populate it.

... If the following can be defended, no more needs to be said. ...

"The proof that Oswald was not there is the fact that none of the four men upstairs who were on the fifth and/or sixth floors said that they had seen him there, which they absolutely must have if he was there. Bonnie Ray Williams was on the sixth floor to within three minutes of the shooting, in a position where he would have seen - and probably did see - whoever was in the "sniper's nest" area. Jack Dougherty was standing "ten feet west of the west elevator" - that is, directly in the path of the fleeing assassin (which scenario was only necessary if Oswald was the shooter having to hurry downstairs to meet Baker & Truly in the second floor lunchroom within 90 seconds) - and was not run over by Oswald as he had to have been."

The defense is relatively simple, and takes reading only the testimonies of Bonnie Ray Williams, Hank Norman, Junior Jarman, Jack Dougherty and, to a lesser extent, Roy Truly.

There is no question that the first of these men were on the fifth floor, for their photo was taken by Tom Dillard (I believe it was; I'm not a photographic evidence expert) in the fifth floor windows after the shooting. Thereafter, we are left to the reliability of their words.

When Bonnie Ray Williams (BRW) was done "washing up," the two of his friends, Danny Arce and Billy Lovelady, who he said he'd intended to meet upstairs to watch the parade had gone outside, according to their testimonies; BRW thought that they might've gone upstairs ahead of him. That he'd spent more time in the washroom than necessary to simply wash his hands is evidenced by what others said that they and other employees had done before going outside. For his part, BRW said that everybody was outside when he finished washing up. The last anyone had seen of him was during the "elevator race" downstairs when they began their lunch break; nobody said they'd seen him before going out, so he must've been in the washroom for more than just a couple of minutes.

Since there's no contradictory testimony, we'll take him at his word that he then got his lunch from the domino room, went to the freight elevator, found it not there at the first floor (he didn't look to see where it was), and decided to take the passenger elevator up to the floor where everyone had been working and where he expected to find his friends Danny and Billy. Beyond his testimony, there is no absolute proof that he was ever on any elevator, or that any elevator had ever been on the sixth floor during the lunch hour, or even that he was himself on the sixth floor other than that he said so (the chicken bones, bag and coke bottle weren't dusted for prints - or if they were, the results were not made known - so even that those were his rests solely on his word).

Jack Dougherty, according to his own testimony, had been on the fifth and sixth floors prior to lunchtime "getting some stock," and I recall that he was seen by at least one or two of the floor-laying crew there. He was not part of the "elevator race," and only he says that he came back downstairs around noontime. Danny Arce is the only person who said that he'd seen Jack during the early part of the lunch hour, also in the domino room. Thereafter, Jack said that he went back to work even though it was his usual custom to "take the whole lunch hour." He explained this by saying that he "would've love to" have seen the President, but that "there was no way" he'd have been able to get through the crowd (despite being "a great big husky fellow") even if he'd "wanted to."

Nobody said that they saw Jack either near the doorway, trying to see through the crowd, or going back to the elevators to go back to work. But then, since nobody saw him anywhere else, we'll concede that he did. According to what he said, he was "getting some stock" on both the fifth and sixth floors. He claimed not to have seen BRW when he'd gone upstairs (and BRW claimed not to have seen Jack, even despite Jack moving around an essentially open floor and, being "a great big husky fellow," probably making a certain amount of noise), nor did he claim to have seen or heard Hank or Junior when they arrived on the fifth floor, or hear them and BRW running across the floor from the southeast corner to the southwest, also - according to them - making a fair amount of noise, even while he was less than 100 feet away in an enclosed area, once again essentially "open." None of them saw him either.

Jack Dougherty, the "Invisible Man."

Junior and Hank went outside in front of the building, their presence there verified by Danny Arce and Roy Truly in their testimonies, and remained there until they'd heard word that the motorcade was on Main Street. Main was mentioned twice on DPD Channel 2, first at about 12:22 and the second time at about 12:26. Although none of them testified as to the exact time they'd left, Roy Truly also stated that they'd been in front of the building until shortly before the motorcade arrived.

Rather than push through the small crowd in the TSBD doorway, the walked around the building along Houston Street, around the back, and in the west rear entry (shipping) door. Finding the passenger elevator gone, they went back around and called the freight elevator down, the only one that could be called. Presumably it was wherever Jack Dougherty had left it when he went back to work "to get some stock." They then rode the elevator to the fifth floor, got off, and walked over to the south wall windows.

No matter which time they'd heard about the motorcade being on Main, I'd give them a minute to walk around the building, 15-20 seconds to check out the missing elevators (although they came in the door adjacent to the freight elevator, they didn't specifically mention looking up the shaft for it, but rather going first to the passenger elevator), 30 seconds for the elevator to descend (at the rate of seven seconds per floor, as testified to by Billy Lovelady at the end of his deposition discussin his having timed the elevator coming down from the seventh floor, and other testimony that both elevators moved at the same rate of speed), another 10 seconds to open the gate, get in and close it, and another 30 seconds to get back to the fifth floor, a total of only about 90 seconds to two minutes from the time they'd left the front of the building, thus arriving there at about 12:23:30 to 12:24, or 12:27:30 to 12:28.

While Hank couldn't seem to remember whether BRW was on the fifth floor when they got there or if he came later, Junior testified that BRW had come after they'd gotten to the windows (another 100-foot-plus walk from the elevator at an average adult walking rate of 4.3 feet per second, about 20 more seconds), and BRW had testified that he'd thought that maybe he'd heard the other two guys downstairs from him, which is why in the deathly quiet of the sixth floor, he said he'd decided to stop on the fifth floor rather than just going all the way down and out of the building. He then saw and joined his two compatriots at the window. Then came the shots.

Jack, meanwhile, was "getting some stock," which entailed moving around whatever floor he was on at any given time (depending upon which books he was retrieving, and of which there is no record), opening the tops of the boxes, removing the books, placing them on the floor or on something else and either carrying them back to a staging area before moving on to the next books he needed, or else carrying at least some of them around to the next box, or perhaps carting them on a hand truck (dolly).

Both the fifth and sixth floors were a mess, with stacks of boxes piled to various heights, in not-very-precise rows along the floor. While it's possible that some of those stacks might've hid either the "great big husky fellow" Jack Dougherty, or the taller black men Bonnie Ray and Junior (and more easily the dimunitive Hank), that hardly suggests that anyone walking among the stacks would be hidden from others' views at all times. And while they might have some sound-deadening effect, it's hard to imagine that they'd have enabled a "great big husky fellow" from being heard making his way around the floor(s) while collecting and moving orders of books, or completely cover the sounds of three men running together across the floor as they "moved rather fast ... at a trotting pace" 100 feet away.

But we can believe, if we wish, that Jack didn't know the three men were there, and they never heard nor saw Jack as he was "getting some stock." We also probably know of some flying pigs.

Prior to coming down to the fifth floor, Bonnie Ray had purportedly been eating his sandwich of "chicken on the bone" in the second set of windows from the southeast "sniper's nest" corner, that is, about 25 feet from where the sniper(s) planned to shoot from and where, presumably, he or they had been near prior to the actual shooting at 12:30. If you've ever been to the Sixth Floor Museum and stood where Bonnie Ray ate his lunch, it's inconceivable that anyone would have been unaware of anyone else as "far away" as the east wall unless they were deadly silent, especially on a floor silent enough that BRW himself cited it as being "one of the reasons I left - because it was so quiet."

We have two options: either BRW was there before the doers arrived, or they were there before him. We can safely presume that they didn't arrive on the sixth floor at the same time as each other and they let him go to the third set of windows to eat his lunch while they set up the shoot two windows over. Nor can we presume that someone watched over BRW while the other(s) did the southeast corner window thing, for it would seem highly unlikely that the man would be able to eat. If he knew they were there, he couldn't be allowed to leave or be left unguarded.

If BRW arrived first and had eaten his sandwich and drank his coke before the doers arrived, it's likely that he would've been seen by them even before they'd gotten over to the southeast corner. This is the long view, looking south to the third window, where the hand truck and lunch remains were found; it is hard to imagine, outside of the sheerest luck, that BRW wouldn't have been seen as the doer(s) crossed from the stairs and elevator to the far corner:

Bonnie Ray would've been silhouetted in the window; had he looked back, he'd have seen at least one man with a gun. Even if he didn't look back, how could the doer(s) be certain of that? Once again, BRW couldn't be left "unattended."

The last possibility is that the doers were already in the southeast corner and heard BRW coming across the floor. They decided to keep quiet, not move, and hope he'd leave. But no, he seemed to be sitting still over there, opening a bag, rustling around with it, opening a pop bottle, his mouth smacking as he ate: the man clearly wasn't going anywhere real soon. It was getting to be time for the target to arrive, and there were still preparations to finish; what would you do then? You can't just leave the guy there to go about his lunch, maybe hang around and watch the parade, while you "surreptitously" got ready to shoot, can you?

But eyewitness descriptions of men and activity in the sixth floor windows precludes that they just lay still and hoped BRW would go away: they made no apparent effort to remain hidden from Bonnie Ray's sight ... and even if he couldn't see directly along the windows, it's pretty apparent from the photo below that men standing anywhere around the first set of windows would be visible to BRW, especially if "the tall one" - as Roy Truly described Bonnie Ray - stood up at any point:

There just weren't an awful lot of boxes to shield them.

Remember that the motorcade was due to arrive at about 12:25. Hank and Junior got to the fifth floor probably no earlier than 12:23 and possibly as late as 12:28, and got there before BRW went down. I submit, then, that it is not plausible that BRW was unaware of the shooter(s) being there, or of the shooter(s) not being aware that BRW was there, and given the deed they were about to commit, they couldn't leave him to his own devices.

I further submit that "the shooter(s)" must have been plural because Bonnie Ray could not have been allowed to leave on his own since he might well go all the way to the bottom and outside the building and alert police or create some sort of disturbance that would bring their plans to naught and/or get them caught, ergo someone else must have had to go downstairs with BRW to keep him corralled and under control.

This likewise virtually eliminates the possibility that Hank and Junior had gone up to the sixth floor because, unless there was a third or fourth man there who could be spared to leave in the moments before the motorcade, already late, finally arrived, it would have necessitated letting someone ride one of the elevators down to the fifth floor - and actually stopping there! - by themselves (and if they didn't stop, what were you going to do from the other elevator: shoot them and give up the game before the objective was achieved?).

Once BRW was on the fifth floor and safely away from his only means of escape - the stairs and elevators - he still couldn't be left alone for fear of his making a break for it. Where best to put someone to keep him from doing so? How about "ten feet west of the west elevator" where a "great big husky fellow" could prevent maybe even as many as three men - all relatively small southern black men - from getting past him?

The only other option I can imagine is that what the WC said happened is exactly what did happen, and Jack was totally oblivious to Oswald running by him to meet his destiny.

[Dupe to below]