Duke Lane

I apologize to the other readers of this thread in asking where you get off using the pronoun "we" with respect to any research that's been done along these lines, other than your demanding it of others. And now that it's been nearly completed to your apparent (dis)satisfaction, you now seem to be in the process of suggesting that it's of little merit or consequence anyway in favor of your "gut feeling."

Do you think, as even a remote impossibility, that such an outlook is why those who don't toe the WC "party line" are considered "crackpots" themselves, especially when even the research that they themselves commission (as you did in this case) and are unwilling to do themselves (as you haven't) doesn't agree with their own preconceived notions (like you're suggesting it doesn't and like the WC did with its own) - they backpedal on and proclaim it meaningless?

Goose ... Gander ... See a correlation here somewhere?

The "truth" is as we proclaim it to be whether or not the facts support such a proclamation. If the facts don't support our theory, there's something wrong with the facts, not our theory.

That would be the WC's mantra, just as it is apparently your own.

I don't suspect, however, that it will preclude you taking credit for this somewhere along the line, if that's the way the wind blows. You are a fool if this is the kind of "evidence" that you believe you can take before anyone willing and able to convene a grand jury at any level outside of Podunk, Nowhere.

While Antti and I are debating the fine points, you're just dismissing it all because it doesn't conform to your "gut feel."

I suspect, however, that your whine will be louder than our protests, so just go ahead and have it your way. Just tell us what the facts are and save us a whole lot of our time proving what you don't want to hear or acknowledge and will disavow or disparage in any case.

... In a previous post I attached links to on-line writings on Ranger history. In WW2 a special force was established prior to Anzio, this was the called the 6615th Ranger Force. As I recall it was a unit formed of several Ranger and other units.

The 6615th Ranger Force was formed specially for use in Operation Shingle (the Anzio battle). The 1st, 2nd, and 4th United States Ranger Battalions, the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, and several other units were molded into a temporary regiment given the name "6615th Ranger Force." Colonel William Orlando Darby, the former commander of the famous 1st Ranger Battalion, became the regimental commanding officer. Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Dammer served as the regimental executive officer.

Also this:

The regular use of the Rangers for conventional missions disturbed many of Darby's men. On 28 November, Major RoY A. Murray, commanding officer of the 4th Ranger Battalion, wrote to the chief, Army Ground Forces, in an effort to resolve certain related problems. ... Murray recommended that the problem be solved by having trained replacements sent to Ranger Force from the 2d and 5th Ranger Battalions that had recently been activated at Camp Forrest, Tennessee.

Nevertheless, I agree with you that it is quite strange that Richard R. Carr's name could not be found among the Rangerroster.org database.

It may be splitting hairs (even tho' some of us are prone to do the same thing when attempting to tie somebody or some group into the assassination), but the way this stuff reads is hardly conclusive:

• "Several Ranger and other units" suggests that those "other units" were not Ranger units; why not just say "several Ranger units?"
  
• That Murray "recommended the problem be solved having trained replacements sent to Ranger Force from the 2d and 5th Ranger Battalions that had recently been activated at Camp Forrest, Tennessee" does not mean that the recommendation was followed through to action.
  

It would seem to me that Rangers from the 2nd and 5th would be assimilated into a like unit - a Ranger unit - rather than being simply a detachment of a "recently activated" unit half-way around the world. Strengthening the 1st, 3rd and 4th using "new" - but nevertheless trained - Rangers makes perfect sense, but leaving them as a separate detachment does not: a chain of command must exist, and it is unlikely that a company-sized unit would stand on its own, administratively or otherwise, with its own identity during any sort of military operation; at the very least, they would have been assigned to temporary duty (TDY) as being attached to one of the other battalion(s), in which case I'd think they would have said that they "fought with the 4th" rather than with a battalion that wasn't even there as a battalion.

Carr also pointed out that it was the 5th that was "annihilated" with only "13 men left in the Fifth Ranger Battalion." The 5th as a unit survived Anzio essentially intact - even if several of its members were detached to the 6615th - since the 5th was in the north Atlantic, and not in Italy. To say that "the 5th Ranger Battalion" was "annihilated" is simply untrue.

We have also seen that the majority of the 1st and 3rd survived Anzio, albeit quite a large number apparently as POWs. There were 36 who were wounded and presumably not captured, but there is no indication that they had anything at all to do with the 5th, and 36 is certainly a greater number than 13. Only 12 were actually killed, which out of a force of approximately 800 (743 + 12 + 36 = 791), making it a far cry from having been "annihilated." The magical number "13" doesn't seem to fit into the scenario at all.

The only apparent record of the 5th - or any part of it - having taken part in Operation Shingle is Murray's recommendation that some of them be used to supplement the existing force. The official histories do not show that Murray's recommendation was followed, and if it was, I'd posit that it was done by transferring Rangers of the 5th to another battalion, not simply taking an independent detachment temporarily.

But ultimately it comes down to why Richard Randolph Carr does not appear in their roster. Is he a lone anomoly, was his service history erased because of his appearance in Shaw, or was he simply just not what he claimed to be? The preponderance of the evidence weighs in for the last.

In the end, what reason is there to believe that, entirely independent of our discussion and the JFK assassination in general, researchers with no axe to grind and who were attempting to compile a definitive list of WWII Rangers would omit this man alone from among their ranks? Coincidence or conspiracy? Or just the simple fact that Richard Randolph Carr was never a Ranger?

Whose They? And why would Youtube have it?

I dunno. The links you provided were to YouTube (see your first post on this topic). They have been removed for "violations of terms of use," presumably meaning the use of the footage. That was my only point. The footage, if taken by the USSS, were funded by and belong to the public, i.e., "public domain." But they're gone, and the links don't help one find the footage via NARA's website.

... The Cats out of the bag and they can't put it back in.

Not unless they can somehow get it off of YouTube!

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWM_Pni45Go...feature=related

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trs8W-gLwJE...feature=related

Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEn63X61fRo...feature=related

Bummer. Removed for "terms of use violations." Were these not government-generated, i.e., public domain?

... Though at least one of those witnesses said that the sniper stuck around for a few seconds and was in no real hurry to leave, it's quite clear that whoever he was, he was quite confident he was going to get away, which makes me believe that, like the Patsy, the real sniper was either an employee or someone who would have an excuse to be there.

What I said before. The only trouble with that scenario, however, is that people don't want to believe that "village idiot" Jack Dougherty could've had anything at all to do with anything at all other than "getting stock."

... I wonder why the SS did not continue their reenactment? Why not include the escape of Oswald, out the 2nd floor and down the stairs - the way he actually came in, and down the street, on the Getaway Bus, into the cab, out past his rooming house, walk back, change pants and grab gun, jacket, and out to the street - to 10th and Patton and then to Texas Theater, oh, it was no use to continue the reenactment because they knew that Oswald had an alibi anyway.

Actually, almost all of that was done:

• USSS or FBI agents walked the distance from Houston to Murphy, where LHO got on the bus, three times and came up with an average of eight minutes for that portion of the trip;
  
• they rode a bus through heavy traffic from Murphy to Lamar, where LHO got off of the bus;
  
• they estimated the time it took him to walk the three blocks (at a minute a block) to the bus depot and Whaley's cab;
  
• re-enacted several times Whaley's trip until (finally, when someone else from the Texas AG's office did the driving with Whaley on board) they could shave precious minutes off so that ...
  
• the next leg of the journey - from Neeley & Beckley to 1026 N Beckley, which was timed at 6½ minutes - could get Oswald to the rooming house by 1:00, with four minutes inside; and of course ...
  
• the last leg to 10th & Patton, which was able to get them there in approximately 11 minutes, or by 1:15 (thus ignoring the fact that Tippit had already been dead for seven to ten minutes by then).
  

They also timed Helen Markham's walk from her home at 328½ W 9th to the bus stop at Patton & Jefferson at something to the tune of two minutes (CD630h).

These are all detailed in Commission Document 630, as I best recall, all during mid-March (except for Whaley's "re-enactments," which, when he did them did not allow for all of LHO's presumed movements in the time allotted). I have copies of all of that somewhere, even if my memory doesn't serve on the exact document number. I've cited them in some of the Tippit threads, including the whole bit about Mary Bledsoe, and what she and Whaley said they saw LHO wearing.

The proof that Oswald wasn't on the sixth floor at 12:30 is that Bonnie Ray Williams was on the sixth floor until as late as 12:28. Since by the time Williams testified, Oswald was cold and buried and posed no threat to him, if he'd seen Oswald there, there would have been no reason not to say so. That he went to great pains to show that he wasn't on the sixth floor that late is suggestive of the fact that he still believed that a threat existed.

Proof that he was still upstairs that late is found in the testimony of Junior Jarman and Hank Norman, who testified that they left the front of the building, walked around the back, and took the freight elevator upstairs after they had heard that the motorcade was on Main Street. There were two such announcements over Channel 2, one at 12:22 and the other at 12:26. If it took them just two minutes to make the trip, including 30 seconds on the elevator, they'd have arrived on the fifth floor at 12:24-12:28.

Both Bonnie Ray and Junior said that Bonnie Ray came to the fifth floor after Jarman and Norman did, and Bonnie Ray said that he'd gone down because he heard the other two downstairs. The weight of the evidence, then, is that Bonnie Ray was still on the sixth floor when the motorcade's being on Main Street was announced over the radio.

The motorcade was five minutes late. Whoever was planning to shoot JFK from the sixth floor - assuming that he was actually shot from there - must have planned to be there at least by 12:25, and probably earlier to either or both set up the shots and/or ensure against the motorcade being ahead of schedule and early.

If someone other than Oswald had been upstairs and shooting, the question of whether Oswald could have gotten downstairs in time to meet Baker & Truly is moot. Anyone else could easily have left via the freight elevator, which was on the fifth floor together with the passenger elevator when Truly looked up the shaft (with Jack Dougherty standing immediately beside it and in the path of someone fleeing down the stairs from above), but which was gone from the fifth floor by the time Baker & Truly had reached there.

Jack was also gone, and while it was acknowledge that he had "probably ridden the elevator from the fifth floor, the question of where he went was never addressed: did he take the elevator down and pass B&T on the way (and how was it that they hadn't seen or heard him?), or did he perhaps ride it up so that it wouldn't pass B&T, then take it down when B&T rode up to the seventh floor on the passenger elevator?

And then there's the larger question of whether someone else might have been in that elevator with him. If so, and if they were the shooters, they had all the time it took for Baker to reach the second floor lunch room plus almost all of the time it took for B&T to reach the fifth floor before they had to be away from where they were.

It will also be noted that Sheriff's Deputy Luke Mooney saw two men dressed in "plainclothes" whom he believed to be in law enforcement descending from above the second floor when he himself got off of the elevator within minutes of the shooting. Mooney is credited with being the first law enforcement person to be on the sixth floor after Baker & Truly had glanced quickly around it on their way back down from the seventh floor. Since Baker was a uniformed cop, and there are no reports of any other cops in the building between Baker and Mooney (other than Mooney's partner, who'd gone up to the seventh floor and joined Mooney later), who were these plainclothes "cops" that Mooney saw?

Once these factors are taken into account, Oswald's ability - or anyone's - to have fled down the stairs, past - if not through - Jack Dougherty and without being seen or heard by Bonnie Ray, Hank and Junior, and arrive at the second floor lunchroom becomes purely academic, and we have no choice but to realize that it plays no role in the solution of the crime.

[...] Whether he could have seen such a person 250+ yards away with the clarity he claims to have (able to discern not only someone wearing glasses beneath a hat brim, but also that the frames were "thick") is an altogether different question, and it appears from the descriptions I'd posted from an Army artillery manual that well pre-dates even Carr's birth, that he could not have. [...]

Dear Detective Lane,

Isn't it reasonable to assume that the only way Carr was able to discern that the man in the window was wearing any kind of glasses at all was because he (the man) was wearing glasses with frames sufficiently thick and dark-colored to, by definition, be visible to a keen-eyed observer some 250 yards away? If so, then we only need to determine whether or not Carr was sufficiently keen-eyed. LOL

The sort of glasses that Richard Cain was known to wear, for example? Oh, by the way, I wonder what kind of glasses Malcolm (Mac) Wallace was wearing in the Fall of 1963?

Does your precious Army Artillery Manual actually say that it is unfeasable to try to spy thick, dark-colored, "horn rimmed" glass frames with the naked eye from 250 yards away? LOL

Dear Tommy-Tom,

It's not my manual, and I only came across it while trying to Google something that could tell me what could be seen at a distance, or how tall things appear at various distances, e.g., a six-foot man would appear to be one inch tall at 500 yards, or whatever.

The manual is Customs of Service for Non-Commissioned Officers and Soldiers (Kautz, August V., Captain, Sixth US Infantry; J.B. Lippincott & Company, Philadelphia, 1864) and can be found online for a more complete reading and reviews. Apparently, it is still something of a "standard" military text (over 1000 Google results on the title, including at least one "military review"), however much it may or may not apply to today's armies or technologies.

A chapter on "The Principles of Firing" states that an infantryman taking aim at enemy soldiers (whether with riflle or cannon) could estimate the distance to his target with an unaided eye according to these visible clues:

• At twenty-five to thirty yards, you can see the white of the eye;
  
• At eighty yards, the men's eyes are distinct points;
  
• At one hundred and fifty yards, you can see the line of the men's eyes;
  
• At two hundred yards, the men's heads are distinctly visible;
  
• At four hundred yards, the ornaments are visible on the head-dress, and colors are distinguishable.
  

Using Google Earth's ruler function, the approximate distance from where the construction staircase was to the southeast (nearest) windows on the TSBD is about 850 feet or 283 yards, nearly the distance of three football fields. That's about 3½ times the distance that "men's eyes are distinct points," nearly twice the distance at which "the line of the men's eyes" is visible, and half-again the distance that "the men's heads are distinctly visible."

Draw your own conclusions. It strikes me that the ability to see glasses on someone's face at 3½ times the distance most people can make out other people's eyes would put that someone's vision in the 70/20 or 20/6 range (can see at 20 feet what most people can only see at 6 feet); I'm okay with it being 20/10 given the larger size of the glasses, even allowing that they were not hidden by or in the shadow of the hat's brim.

I'd say that the burden of proof of such exceptional vision would be upon you to prove and not me to disprove. Not having seen a photo of him at age 40, for all I know he wore coke-bottle glasses himself, but I'm at least allowing that he had 20/20 vision.

Thanks as ever for your insightful feedback and thoughtful questions. Whom is it that you think Carr saw, Cain or Wallace or both?

Love always, Dukie-poo

Okay, what do you think the obituary will prove? Why go through the trouble of getting it if it is likely only a "reiteration of his family's belief" and won't be to your satisfaction anyhow? Unless it is a story entirely different to what we've been told about him, what then?

Yes, what is "value" of the obituary? If it states something rather different than what we have been told about RR Carr, the JFK assassination witness, what then? Do we simply assume that he must be a totally different man? Or, do we assume that RR just committed perjury at the Shaw trial?

I think if the obituary is indeed that of the the same man (same RR Carr we're hoping for, right?), it will state the most relevant things about him/his life and help us put his credibility issue to rest. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if his wife might be willing to confirm some of RR's statements, the Ranger issue, especially if the obituary supports what we know about him.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what it says before we make a judgement.

Still waiting on it in the mail; it wasn't in yesterday's or today's, and they only called two days ago to say it was going to go out in the mail, presumably that day. Will keep the old eyes open for it.

If we find that the obit is for a Richard Robert Carr, then we're back at square one; no obit for Richard Randolph Carr. If it's for a Richard R. Carr and some of the information included in it - say, it says he was "a witness to the JFK assassination" or "lived many years in Dallas" - then we've still got a possibility if not a probability. If it doesn't give us any details that identify him as being "our" Richard Carr, then it's to the phone we go.

And it's to the phone we go in any case to see what we can clarify. If his wife and/or kid(s) - assuming that those we've got are actually his family - say something like "oh, yeah, he told that story a lot, but he told a lot of 'stories,'" or his wife says that the first time she'd heard about his "witnessing the assassination" was at the Christmas party at Mary Sue Brown and Elsie Johnson's place, then it's going to raise an awful big "hmmmmmm."

Will something like that prove anything? No, the faithful will be able to cling to their belief of what he saw (after all, they're convinced he could see through buildings!), while the more judicious might wonder at the fact that the man didn't say anything at all to his spouse until he got into a game of one-upmanship with a couple of women who knew Jack Ruby.

In the meanwhile, I wrote back to the guy who maintains the RangerRoster.org website with more questions. He notes first of all that "our" Richard R. Carr's ASN (Army Serial Number) was 14139454. Further:

Those so inclined may cling to the thread of hope that the fact that "sometimes the Army does the illogical" permits the possibility that at least a part of the 5th Bn was at Anzio and that Richard Carr might have been one of them (we have already heard that he may simply have been "attached to" the Rangers while not actually being a Ranger, despite his claim to having been "a member" of the Fifth, and thus may be telling the truth).

It does appear, however, from the last answer that, unless he enlisted under an alias (which his enlistment data does not attest to), his name does not appear on any Ranger roster and he therefore was not a Ranger. We may be satisfied that as, perhaps, a mechanic assigned to support the Ranger batallion's transportation needs (I imagine they drove jeeps or something, right?), he was technically correct in calling himself a "member of the Fifth Ranger Batallion" even if he was giving a (deliberately?) false impression of being a Ranger, especially with his being "qualified as an expert" with rifles as part of that batallion.

Why someone qualifying, even in boot camp, as an expert marksman being allowed to remain as a mechanic or a cook is a tad beyond me, especially then and especially at Carr's age at the time (20), but as said above, "sometimes the Army does the illogical."

Actually, according to Ron's first answer above, it doesn't seem at all that only 13 members of the batallion "survived," as cited by Carr: only 12 were actually killed, 36 wounded (without being captured?), the vast majority (743) having been captured and apparently not killed.

All in all, I don't quite understand how anyone can find these discrepancies to be supportive of his reliability and veracity: it strikes me like a little kid telling most of the truth or enough of it to be considered "honest," while keeping his fingers crossed behind his back. But we'll hopefully figure out what the real truth is (not that I think everyone will accept it!) in due course.

Okay, what do you think the obituary will prove? Why go through the trouble of getting it if it is likely only a "reiteration of his family's belief" and won't be to your satisfaction anyhow?

Because someone else who apparently would have preferred that anyone other than themself be the one to do the actual research insisted on it.

Did we have his service number, btw? I didn't notice that in his enlistment data, or maybe I overlooked it....

... the foreman probably should have been on the 9th, them folks do move around you know, the foreman could have been on the 12th instead and Carr could have been on the 9th when he saw what he saw. ... The point is to try and make sense of what Carr claims to have seen imo, and not to focus on what floor he was on. If you scrutinize every word of each witness, I'm sure you will be able to do the same kind of "debunking" with a great number of them. You seem to approach his case now with the assumption that Carr was a pathological lxxr, whereas I, for example, allow him the benefit of the doubt and consider him a bona fide witness.

This strikes me as a backwards way to look at the question. How does one "make sense of" what he presumably saw if we won't first examine the question of whether he saw it or could have seen it.

Isn't this what we accuse the WC of doing, presuming that Oswald was guilty, collecting and presenting only the data that supported that conclusion, ignoring that which put it into dispute, and stretching the facts that it did collect and present in such a way to support its preordained conclusion? I think that, on the face of it, the Report did a really great job of "making sense" of Oswald's presumed guilt, don't you? I mean, as long as you don't read any further ...?

Nobody saw Oswald on the 6th floor, nobody saw him with a gun, but because nobody saw him at the crucial time or the minutes leading up to it, and since he did carry some sort of package into the TSBD that morning - because nobody could prove he didn't shoot Kennedy - then we "must" presume that he did it. We criticize the WC for daring to do that, despite the exculpatory evidence it turned up despite its best efforts not to.

How is this situation different? Carr said he saw something from the sixth or seventh floor on his way to the ninth, it's possible that the foreman had gone elsewhere or that Carr was on a higher floor than he'd thought, so since he said he saw something, we "must" presume that he saw it and that any of the other "facts" he gave us must be mistaken in favor of our preordained conclusion, and nobody should dare criticize us for doing that no matter what exclusionary evidence we choose to ignore.

Why is dissecting Carr's statements and testimony any different than dissecting others'? For example, so what if Helen Markham, who took a bus to work every day at the same time said, in the only two times she said anything about what time it was (and was "confused and inconsistent" in so doing), said that the time was at first 1:06 (on her affidavit) or that it "wasn't but 1:06 or 1:07" (in her testimony)? The conclusion is that Oswald shot Tippit at 1:15, so what value is there in dissecting her every word that it was earlier? And so what if Tom Bowley made a statement corroborating her?

And how did that conclusion come about? Through the realization that Oswald could not have left 1026 North Beckley at 1:04 and have gotten to 10th & Patton by 1:06, 1:07 or 1:10, at least without help, which the WC likewise presumed he didn't have. It therefore determined that Tippit was shot at the latest possible moment before Donnie Benavides (but not Tom Bowley, whom it then could not ignore with his 1:10 estimate) made the radio call.

Their presumption: Oswald did it. Your presumption: Carr saw it.

There's no cause to "scrutinize every word of every witness" lest I and others are "able to do the same kind of 'debunking' with a great number of them," yet I presume - and it seems pretty self-evident - that it's okay to "scrutinize every word of every witness" if doing so can "debunk" the WC conclusions. It's not even a case of "what's good for the goose" not being "good for the gander," it's just that some "reasonable conclusions" (e.g., that Oswald killed Kennedy and Tippit alone and unaided) should be considered under a harsh light beneath a strong microscope, while others (e.g., that Carr did and could see what he said he saw) should be accepted at face value.

Therefore, whether or not Lee Oswald was even at 10th & Patton ... er, um, I mean, regardless of whether or not Carr could see the area where he (belatedly) claimed to have seen three men emerge from behind the TSBD and get into a Rambler station wagon, we must presume that they were in fact there and did what he said they did and move forward from that "established fact," is that about right? One cow is sacred and the other a blasphemy?

Somehow, I think that if Johnny Brewer had said one thing about Oswald in front of his store and sneaking into the theater in his 1963 affidavit, another in his 1964 testimony, and another years later on a television show, most of us would be all over him for doing so, nit-picking the details of his various stories to death, and reviling him for making stuff up (and whoever had "revealed" his "duplicity" would be lauded), yet when a "conspiracy witness" does the same thing, we put it off to bad memory, not paying attention to details at the time it happened, or any of a handful of other innocent explanations (and vilifying anyone who attempted to "debunk" him), while ignoring at the same time that many "non-conspiracy witnesses" can recall the exact details of everything they did, saw and said all these many years later ... just as many "conspiracy witnesses" can too.

Those we want to be believable, are; those we don't, aren't; and no amount of "facts" will change our minds.

DUKE: The fact that you can't see the 7th floor of the courthouse from the 6th floor of the TSBD certainly doesn't mean that you couldn't see the 6th - or 5th - floor of the TSBD from the 7th floor of the courthouse, now, does it. In fact, who's to say that the Old Red Courthouse, completed during the late 19th century, was as high as it is today back in 1963? It might also have moved. Or maybe the foreman wasn't on the ninth floor, but maybe on the 11th. Whatever it takes to show that these "somewhat" inconsistent recollections are nevertheless accurate ....

Undoubtedly, that narrow staircase you see in the aerial was actually 10 or 20 yards wide to enable someone on them to have been seen out beyond the buildings that today block one's view. The photos that makes the stairs look narrower than that have obviously been altered.

Do you really expect me to reply to that?

Nope.

In post #1 (this thread, link here above) you expressed doubts about R.R. Carr's enlistment in the military. You also stated that he may not have been a Ranger at all. In post #40 of this thread I showed you his enlistment data.

Right. Since it doesn't include the word "Ranger" anywhere in that data, how have you proved he was a Ranger?

If his obituary states he was a Ranger, will you then consider Carr's statements as his best recollections of the events of 11/22/1963 and him an honest witness? ... You and I have done some fairly thorough research and we've only come across 2 men with that name. ... I'm sure Myrtle could set the record straight about this RR Carr. ... it's not my business to update military records, nor do I want to take that task upon me. I'm mostly interested in what Carr had to say after the events of 11/22/1963 and I do find it interesting that he was attacked on several occasions especially after he came forward with his statements.

Let's say that it does say that he was an Army Ranger; does that make the obituary a correct historical document, or a reiteration of his family's belief that he was because that's what he'd told them, too? Or if it doesn't specifically state that he was a Ranger: will you concede that he lied under oath, or will you insist that the family just didn't mention this in his obit? If the obit does say he was, and the Army says he wasn't, who are you going to believe?

(The weight of it now is that independent researchers intent upon compiling a list of all WWII Army Rangers did not find his name among the records of WWII Army Rangers, and we have no cause to believe that they purposely omitted his name despite evidence of his service. If they won't take his sworn testimony that he was an Army Ranger as "proof" that he indeed was, on what basis should we? If they do, I'll willingly conceded that if they say he was a Ranger, then he was an Army Ranger; will you concede that if they don't and won't say he was, then he clearly wasn't?)

And what if Myrtle is his wife (and the same wife he had in 1963 through 1969) and doesn't corroborate all of these claims we've been discussing? Or what if she's a second or third wife and has no real idea about any of this other than that's what he'd told everyone?

Perhaps you don't realize it, but you often come off as abrasive in your posts, especially when someone disagrees with you. Perhaps this is your style, or perhaps you don't care. This is one of the things that drives people away from these forums. No one has stronger opinions than I do, but I feel that it's possible to debate and disagree without being arrogant or dismissive.

I tend to be dismissive when, for example, I show that a line of sight is impossible and people argue that it really isn't just because the person said they saw something: so Carr said he was on the sixth floor ... no, the seventh floor ... oh, well he could have been on the 10th floor then ... the important thing being to establish the "truth" of what he said he saw.

That, IMO, requires selective use of evidence: if he said he saw something from the sixth or seventh floor, but he couldn't have seen what he claims he saw, then we dismiss his inability to have seen something of possible importance by making him "mistaken" in his whereabouts, or the physical evidence of the impossibility somehow inaccurate or no longer relevent.

Bernice did a good job in questioning the credibility of Romeck and Rackley, the witnesses you used to discredit Worrell. In my opinion, she cast as much doubt on their word as you did on Worrell's. I also agree with Bernice's view that talking to Worrell's relatives is meaningless, at least in terms of trying to prove anything conclusively.... You also seem to ignore the fact that several witnesses claimed that their FBI reports and/or Warren Commission testimony had been altered and did not accurately reflect what they'd said.

I don't agree with that assessment: all that I could note was that Bernice questioned how "reliable" they were when they said that "Secret Service" people surrounded the building when we all know that there were no Secret Service people there. That's a simple observation of a man who did not claim to have seen their USSS ID or that they told him they were USSS, but who merely made an assumption based, presumably, on the men's dress and that most people associate the USSS as being with the President. Their incorrect presumption of a relatively minor fact calls their entire testimony into question? I disagree.

Talking with someone's relatives certainly can't be considered as "conclusive," especially if we can't even count on what witnesses themselves said then or say now, and even if we could, it's possible if not probable that their statements/testimony were altered, so we really don't know anything about this case and there are no FACTS, merely "the record," which is all or part fabrication. What was important - just as it is with Richard Carr - is whether his own family believed him, if he was often taken to flights of fancy, braggadoccio, exaggeration, telling tall tales or outright lies, or if he'd ever told any of them that he'd made up the story.

If he had, would you dismiss their saying so and say that it had no bearing on what he'd told the WC? If you credit their saying so - thereby discrediting what he swore under oath - how or why would you discredit anything else they had to say? Dickey told his mother that Earl Warren had given him, Amos Euins and Robert Jackson the use of his official limousine the evening after they testified to tour Washington. What do you make of that? Presuming that his mother didn't "misremember," does it in any way reflect on his credibility?

I stand by what I said regarding referring to Worrell as Dickey. Regardless of whether or not his family called him that, what other witness has been referred to on this forum, by you or anyone else, by their first name? Especially a nickname like Dickey?

Well, there's Donnie Benavides, whom I've called "Donnie" many, many times. He continued to go by that name throughout his adult life, and that's also what his wife called him when we spoke several years ago. Ditto Tom (Temple F.) Bowley, whom I've visited with several times. What would you have me call any of them? You might consider the name to be dimunitive, but you have to realize that, in Texas, people have names like "Billy" and "Tommie" put on their birth certificates in place of William and Thomas, and many of them go by the full name "Billy" and "Tommie" even in place of "Bill" and "Tom." Should I call them "James" and "Domingo" and "Temple" when nobody else does or ever did, and they never went by any of those names outside of official documents? Or would you prefer that I stick with their last names?

I take note of your objection, but I'm not going to change a thing. Whether I agree with them or like them or not, they are "real people" to me - not merely names in a book - and that is what they are or were known by, so that's what I'm going to call them. You can call me Duke whether you like or agree with me, you don't have to call me "Mark" if you don't.

I've been studying this case for about 35 years now. Many here have at least that much experience, if not more. I think you're scrutinizing Carr, and now Worrell, to a degree that defies logic. If you succeed in converting a majority of people on this forum to your view that Carr could not have seen what he said he saw, and neither could Worrell, what have you accomplished?

Actually, I looked into Worrell's story quite a while ago; the Carr inquiry is much more recent.

The object isn't and wasn't to scrutinize and dissect one small portion of what either of them said, but to view the details of what they said in light of the totality of their testimony. It is not solely a question of whether Dickey Worrell saw someone run from the side of the TSBD while Romack and Rackley say he couldn't have; it is a question of whether he was even in Dealey Plaza. If he wasn't, then it doesn't really matter what he said he saw, does it? Can you agree to that much, with an emphasis on "if?" If not - if you think his observations are valid whether or not he was even downtown that day, please tell me so I don't waste the pain of carpal tunnel trying to explain how he couldn't have seen what he claimed to have seen if he wasn't there.

That - and not what he did or didn't see - is the key question, just as is whether Carr could have physically been able to see what he claimed in Shaw to have seen. If not, then to what end should we credit what they had to say?

It's easy to put it all off to being "somewhat inconsistent," but then we have to wonder why people like Bill Newman (is it okay to call him Bill? His actual name is Billy, by the way) and others can be consistent down to the movements of their little fingers, while others aren't expected to know which floor they were on or where a car was parked or how many men they saw or what color the driver really was.

If a supposed witness's statements cannot be dissected and found to be either in error or, for that matter impossible, you realize that the detailed statements of, say, the "three blind mice" on the 5th floor that tend to exonerate Lee Oswald from being the shooter must likewise be dismissed or ignored as well, right? If the Devil is in the details, you've got to remember that he doesn't play fair: if the details can't be used to disprove something, then they can't be used to prove anything either, and then the whole question of the JFK assassination comes down to "did he get shot and killed or not" since nothing anyone said or did (or said they said or did) has any value (especially since it might not be what they actually said they said or did!).

Maybe we should just have one last poll and get it over with: who believes JFK is dead? Great. Let's close the forum now that our work is done.

(And, damn! There I go being abrasive again!)

Just because my photo shows me in a tux rather than a beret, and because I didn't stick around long enough to retire doesn't make me "'non-military' oriented!" I probably started earlier and stayed longer than most, including association with the Civil Air Patrol as early as about seven years old (through my parents, who started what would become a huge CAP squadron, which I joined and later commanded myself) not to mention active duty USAF OSI.

From a trial perspective, it's difficult to imagine anyone advising a witness to lie through his teeth, but I certainly can imagine someone deciding during prep that military service is something you should emphasize, and the more distinguished it is, the more you should emphasize it.

I can also imagine a discourse something like this leading to the identification of the driver of the Rambler:

Likewise, eliminating even the last question, I can imagine a witness being prepped in this manner coming to the conclusion that counsel wanted him to say the man was "a Latin," even if counsel didn't quite say that's what he wanted to hear.

Outside of such possibilities, who else might have convinced Carr to blow smoke, and why?

Dear Detective Lane,

Isn't it reasonable to assume that the only way Carr was able to discern that the man in the window was wearing any kind of glasses at all was because he (the man) was wearing glasses with frames sufficiently thick and dark-colored as to make them visible to an observer some 250 yards away? The sort of glasses that Richard Cain was known to wear, for example?

I am, as always, totally subservient to you sir as I am, well let's face it, just a lowly "beat cop" and well, you do far outrank me. Sir. LOL -- Thomas Graves

Oh, by the way, I wonder what kind of glasses Malcolm (Mac) Wallace was wearing in the Fall of 1963?

I wouldn't know about the "rank" thing since USAF SPs and OSI aren't real cops anyway and wouldn't have any valid investigatory experience. I bow to the "lowly" beat cop every time.

Which floor were both(?) Mac Wallace and Richard Cain on, the "fifth" or the "top" floor? I can't remember, but they were on one of those two floors based on the keen observations of Mr. Carr. If you're going to claim that they were on the sixth floor, then it wasn't either of them that Carr saw.

... I am now convinced that Richard Randolph Carr is indeed the man born in Georgia in 1922, enlisted in the Army in 1942 and passed away in West Virginia in 1996. That is, I'm 90% sure he is also the man who witnessed the JFK assassination. ...

The Inter Mountain News had a brief announcement of the death of Richard R. Carr on August 5, 1996, followed by a longer one (2-3 paragraphs) on August 6. He died in a Veterans Hospital in Clarksburg, WV, which, it being a US Government facility, might explain the issuance of a death certificate by the State of Georgia (if that info is correct in SSDI). Said Richard R. Carr was born in Fulton, GA; I do not know if it indicated whether he ever lived in Dallas. A "long list" of his survivors is to be found in the longer article. The article also indicates that he served during WWII, but I don't yet know any additional details.

These should reach me in the next couple of days. I'll post what they have to say - or scan them - when I've received them. After that, if the article doesn't say, we'll find out if he and Richard Randolph Carr of Dallas fame are one and the same man.

Duke says:

The fact that Richard Carr is on record as telling three completely different stories (emphasis mine) about what he'd seen should be enough to destroy his credibility with any but the most ardent of the faithful, who - as the sobriquet implies - take things on faith rather than on fact, and whose faith can't and won't be shaken by contrary facts. Yet you'd rather tell me that I'm "a bit off base here" when all I've dealt with are the facts?!?

Sure, Carr didn't parrot the exact same facts at each deposition, agreed, but 3 completely different stories?

How about 3 somewhat inconsistent stories, instead?

OK, let's go with "somewhat inconsistent."

First, on what he heard:

• In January and February of 1964, Carr said that he was on the building and heard "backfires" that he didn't realize were gunshots until he'd gotten home and his wife or sister-in-law told him that the President had been shot, at which point he put two and two together and realized what the sounds were.
  
• In February 1969, he not only recognized the sounds as gunfire "immediately," he also watched a bullet furrow into the ground on the plaza.
  

Then on where he saw "sport coat man:"

• In 1964, on the "top" floor of the TSBD, noting that "it would have been impossible" for him to have observed "the lower floors and entrance" to the TSBD, a fact corroborated by FBI agents who went onto the building to where Carr said he was and made the same observation, also noting that the sixth floor could not be seen from there;
  
• In 1967, it was behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll with another man;
  
• In 1969, the man was in the fifth floor, which has floors above it and is not the "top" floor (this is not a question of counting windows from the ground). What "would have been impossible" for him to see in 1964 - and what FBI agents confirmed couldn't be seen - became visible to him.
  

When he next saw someone looking like "sport coat man:"

• In 1964, it was after he'd returned to the ground level and walked out to Commerce & Houston;
  
• In 1967, it was from on the building;
  
• In 1969, it was from on the building. Climbing back down seven flights of stairs is an easy thing to forget.
  

Knowing whether you saw someone eye-level to eye-level or saw them from seven stories up is a similar perspective, hard to distinguish one from the other.Where he next saw "sport coat man" after his being in the window:

• In 1964, it was at the corner of Commerce & Houston, alone;
  
• In 1967, the man wasn't in any window, but was behind the picket fence with another man. Carr watched him go behind the TSBD and then emerge from behind it with a third man;
  
• In 1969, it was coming out of the back of the TSBD with two other men after being in the window, alone.
  

One man, two men, three ... corner of Commerce, corner of Elm, hey, it was all Houston Street, so what's so inconsistent about that?

Where the Rambler was:

• In 1967, it was parked on Record Street just north of Commerce, behind the Old Red Courthouse;
  
• In 1967, he doesn't say where the car was parked, only that it drove off north on Houston and turned on Pacific;
  
• In 1969, the car was parked facing the wrong way on the left side of the street next to the Depository.
  

The three blocks between Elm & Houston and Commerce & Record appeared small from seven stories up, and the difference was hard to distinguish, hence the slight inconsistency.

Who drove the Rambler:

• In 1964, it was a "young negro man" who was waiting in the car;
  
• In 1967, "colored man (he [Carr] called him a Negro)," got into the car after coming out of the rear of the TSBD;
  
• In 1967, a "Latin" got into the car after coming out of the rear of the TSBD.
  

Where the car went:

• In 1964, it drove north on Record Street;
  
• In 1967, it drove north on Houston Street and turned on Pacific;
  
• In 1969, it sped north on Houston Street out of sight.
  

Houston Street and Record Street are both paved with black macadam and run parallel, and thus are easy to confuse. One is directly ahead, the other is to the right, which are very close to each other when you're seven stories up in the air, or, for that matter, when you're at ground level (depending upon how consistent his whereabouts might be judged to be).

"Sport coat man's" observed movements:

• In 1964, he was unseen until he appeared out of the crowd at Houston & Commerce, and then turned east on Commerce and walked a block to Record Street where he got into a Rambler station wagon;
  
• In 1967, he was observed walking "south on Houston Street and turned left up Main Street where he disappeared from view," the Rambler already having left from Houston Street some time before;
  
• In 1969, he was "going down Houston Street, to the corner of Commerce, and then turned toward town on Commerce," more specifically he "crossed the street [at the TSBD] and then came down this side of Houston Street and turned onto Commerce Street," while Carr was "watching that man at that time, and I watched him until I could see him no longer." The Rambler had left the wrong side of Houston Street and disappeared from view at some time prior.
  

You are correct that these variations are only "somewhat" inconsistent. After all, a car parked on Record Street at Commerce makes a lousy getaway car for three men, so if he changed it to Houston Street, it was only because it made better sense for two men to get in it there while the one man who'd gotten into it previously clearly had no need to get into it at Record Street. That there were no "two other men" in 1964 does not preclude their existence in 1967 or 1969, especially when they didn't accompany "sport coat man" down Houston and into the Rambler on Record Street when the car wasn't on Record Street for "sport coat man" to have gotten into.

That is certainly not a detail one would expect someone to remember clearly after only two or three months: it takes time to assimilate events properly. Undoubtedly, he was nervous when talking to the FBI, and screwed everything up not once, but twice, and one of those in writing. It takes years for people's memories to come back to them cohesively; in the meanwhile, one should expect some minor inconsistencies.

Before taking it any further, what floor or range of floors would you stipulate Carr to have been at on the new courthouse building. He said that he was on his way up to the ninth to see the foreman and had reached either the sixth or seventh, but you suggest that he could have gotten all the way up to the ninth where the foreman was (and, being so close to a job interview, did he decide to go back down to the ground level without seeing the foreman or not?); do you think he might've maybe gone to the tenth? Eleventh? All the way to the top of the building? Climbing six flights of stairs can easily be confused with climbing ten ("somewhat" inconsistent), but I'm curious how many additional flights you're willing to allow him to have climbed in order to see what he claimed to have seen.

... I would say that it is not possible to determine Carr's line of sight precisely from the existing photos of today. ... Duke says ...:

"Frankly, nobody can go to where Carr was at the time because he was on a staircase built on the outside of a steel structure over which a wall of windowless stone was placed. The only ways someone could get there now is to rappel down from the top of the building, climb up the wall from below, or be lowered in something like a window-washer's gondola."

Do you see how your opinion changes as well?

Please see also post #25 (same thread, above) here for the visual from the TSBD south east corner of the 6th floor to the new courthouse under construction.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...t=0&start=0 ....

Yes, please: count how many of the upper floors of the courthouse building can be seen in that photo: three. That would be 10, 11 and 12. Now, I grant you that there's only about 10 feet per story, meaning that the 9th floor would be 10 feet below what you can see here, the 7th floor only 30 feet below what we see here, so there's no real reason to consider that distance.

The fact that you can't see the 7th floor of the courthouse from the 6th floor of the TSBD certainly doesn't mean that you couldn't see the 6th - or 5th - floor of the TSBD from the 7th floor of the courthouse, now, does it. In fact, who's to say that the Old Red Courthouse, completed during the late 19th century, was as high as it is today back in 1963? It might also have moved. Or maybe the foreman wasn't on the ninth floor, but maybe on the 11th. Whatever it takes to show that these "somewhat" inconsistent recollections are nevertheless accurate ....

Undoubtedly, that narrow staircase you see in the aerial was actually 10 or 20 yards wide to enable someone on them to have been seen out beyond the buildings that today block one's view. The photos that makes the stairs look narrower than that have obviously been altered.

The fact that you can't see any of the courthouse building today from Houston Street, and only the top couple of floors from the corner of the TSBD, clearly does not prove what someone looking from the other direction can see: just because there are buildings keeping you from seeing me doesn't mean that those buildings block my view of you, now does it.

In post #1 (this thread, link here above) you expressed doubts about R.R. Carr's enlistment in the military. You also stated that he may not have been a Ranger at all. In post #40 of this thread I showed you his enlistment data.

Right. Since it doesn't include the word "Ranger" anywhere in that data, how have you proved he was a Ranger?

Once you've done so, I recommend getting in touch with the Rangers at Fort Benning so they can properly include him in their records. I'm sure they'll appreciate it, especially when you show them his sworn testimony that he was one of them, and since he's no longer alive to be called to task, they should just go ahead and add him to their roster. I can't imagine they'd want (or have) better proof than that, can you? And if they don't, why should we demand any better? After all, he was in the Army, so at worst, he's only "somewhat" wrong about being a Ranger.

Thomas, if you "knew" me through my relatives, as many people do, I have no discomfort in your calling me what my relatives call me. "Dickey," insofar as his family is concerned, is his name, and that which he answered to. There's nothing demeaning about using it. I know two other Texans who go by Dickey, one who's in his 60s, the other in his 30s. I'm sorry if it offends you, but it doesn't offend them, and apparently didn't offend Dickey Worrell.

How does anyone - including a beat cop - decide who's credible and who's not? If their story checks out, they're credible, right? They might "not" be, to the beat cop I suppose, if they don't agree with the beat cop's POV, but that doesn't prevent their story from checking out. OTOH, no matter how much we want to believe someone, if their story doesn't hold up, then we've got a problem.

The thing people seem to lose sight of is that the story that Carr originally told the FBI in 1964 does hold up.

Sorry.

What I meant to say was, "beat me up with facts, not just your opinion."

... I also have to say that I find your persistent referral to Worrell as "Dickey" to be a bit disquieting. I don't really know why, it just sounds demeaning and is, imo, unnecessary. I'm assuming this is what his family called him, but obviously you didn't know him personally. Why keep using this rather childish nickname when referring to him? I don't know, it just sounds disrespectful to me. ...

You're right: it's what his family called him. No, I didn't know Dickey personally, but I've spend enough time visiting with people who did that it's really the only thing I know to call him that those who knew him know whom I'm referring to.

What would you have me call him instead? How many here can even properly pronounce the family's name? Wor-RELL? WORR-ell? WARL? I've been in the house he grew up in and had coffee and lunches with his mother and other family members. I don't know if that "entitles" me to anything, but "Dickey" is the guy I've come to learn about, even posthumously, from people who did know him, and so I don't feel uncomfortable calling him that, no matter whether you or anyone else has a problem with it.

It does sort of suck that I can't stand up for what he said, but I don't know anyone else (other than Mom, of course) who thinks he didn't embellish the story at least just a little, and maybe a little bit more. FWIW.

... Neither Carr nor Worrell are around to defend themselves. I think Bernice did a fine job in pointing out your selective use of witnesses who may be no more believable than the two you are so passionately trying to discredit. I don't think you even addressed what she was saying, let alone attempted to refute her points.

... The early critics demolished the credibility of many witnesses in Dealey Plaza. If the lives of Craig, Carr and Worrell are going to be examined under a microscope by researchers like you, at some point we're going to run out of any credible witnesses to the assassination. I certainly don't mean to offend you with my comments; on the contrary, I hope you take it as constructive criticism. I respect you and find your posts informative, but I do think you're a bit off base here.

We can agree to disagree.

How does one determine who a "credible witness" is? John Does claims to have "been there and seen that," which we all accept, while Jane Smith also claims to have "been there and seen something different." Since they both claim to have been there - and we have no photographic or other evidence to support either claim - are they therefore both right?

If they claim to have seen two completely different things in the same place at roughly the same time - but not to have seen what the other said happened - did both things occur, only one of them (and if so, which one), or neither of them? If in doubt and the only other known witnesses claim neither of them happened, then what? D, all of the above?

Please explain to me how using ALL known witnesses to the events beside and behind the TSBD within a few minutes of the shooting is "selective." I can only say that out of Carr, Worrell, Rackley, Romack and Pate, the last three of them generally corroborate one another, even to the extent of identifying each other by name, description or action. Can you say the same about either of the others? Can you show me a single photograph immediately before the shooting that puts Dickey - er, excuse me: James Worrell, which nobody called him - in front of the TSBD directly beneath the SE windows? Just one, that's all I want. If he was there, surely it must've been recorded, eh?

The fact that Richard Carr is on record as telling three completely different stories about what he'd seen should be enough to destroy his credibility with any but the most ardent of the faithful, who - as the sobriquet implies - take things on faith rather than on fact, and whose faith can't and won't be shaken by contrary facts. Yet you'd rather tell me that I'm "a bit off base here" when all I've dealt with are the facts?!?

I suppose I should be grateful that I'm not writing on The Christianity Forum. and hypothesizing that Holy Blood, Holy Grail probably got it right!

You don't have to like what I've got to say. You don't have to agree with me. But honestly, don't you think it would be better and more intellectually honest to refute what I have to say with different and better facts than mere feelings and disgruntlement?

I realize that I'm probably undermining something of a religion, but I thought we were dealing with a murder here, not merely mythology. Maybe I'm just too much of an idealist who doesn't want to rely upon ideology to make my point. Do you have a better way of describing it?

I certainly don't mean to offend you with my comments; on the contrary, I hope you take it as constructive criticism.

... Maybe even as a challenge: being "politically correct" is not the same thing as being correct. Prove me wrong. I welcome it. Do better research than I have, prove your point with evidence, and you can beat me up like an ugly stepchild all you want. Until then, please don't whine at me for tearing down false idols that some people might worship. It's not my fault that there can only be one God, is it?

I mean, after all, if there is only one ...!

There are only so many "credible witnesses to the assassination," and those are the ones whose credibility withstands scrutiny. Do you think I'm wrong about that? Or is everyone "credible" until some jerk like me irresponsibly attempts to prove their incredibility, much to everyone's dislike and chagrin?

If I recall, didn't Worrell claim he saw "fire" coming from the muzzle of the rifle? How likely is that!

My studied opinion is that it is entirely unlikely that Worrell saw "fire" coming from the muzzle of a rifle. It doesn't matter if "fire" did come from the muzzle of a rifle fired from the TSBD, or if it didn't: the simple fact is that Worrell wasn't there to see it either way.

... Perhaps if you did not bring down every thread and only copied and pasted what you were replying to, it would make things much easier.....for others to reply to you....

I don't bring down every thread, Bernice, and do only excerpt those particular things I'm replying to, to make things easier. You don't see your entire post replicated in my reply, do you? Where did those lengthy quotes of testimony disappear to?

... Why is it that you believe as you call them the downers, and not the witnesses....??

this has been mentioned not only by myself in all this, but by tothers and more than a few times.... You state there was no reason for you not to believe the downers..as you call them ..I do wonder if you investigated their stories as soundly as you say you have the others....?? I looked into the two of them, and imo in places they made no sense..and do not...and posted such in my reply to you, that you say you did not comprehend... Perhaps instead of just zeroing in on the negative that you see, within the witnesses, information...and thereby throwing all out.....as you do..... and only zeroing in on the downers that agrees with what you think you see....in proving the witnesses wrong, you might find a middle ground here somewhere......imo.

We'll leave aside the fact that I've never called anyone "downers;" you must be thinking of someone else.

In some cases - as with Carr and Worrell - the question is whether they are, in fact, witnesses. The bus schedule alone knocks Worrell out of the competition: if he saw JFK land at Love Field, walked to and caught a bus downtown, it would not have left him off at the route's terminus several blocks from DP until after 12:30. Only one bus could have gotten him there. The only ways that he could have gotten to DP in time were (1) if he'd left Love Field before AF1 landed, or (2) if one of the bus drivers lingered at Love an extra ten minutes to see the plane land, perhaps with the intent of telling his supervisors that he was held up by traffic or security.

Since there is no evidence to even suggest the latter - that is, other than Worrell's claim to have gotten to DP in time - there is no reason to think that was the case. Even if it was, Worrell could only have "just" gotten there before the motorcade showed up, not any "hour, hour and a half" - or even 15 minutes - beforehand. So explain to me why anyone should believe that he actually did?

Carr physically could not see the area he claimed to have seen - and then only in his Shaw testimony 5½ years later - so on that basis alone, why should anybody believe he saw something that would've been hidden from his view by buildings? If he could have seen the Rambler station wagon on Houston and watch it leave northbound on Houston and turn on Pacific, how is it that Worrell missed it while standing just across the street from the TSBD and at the corner the station wagon supposed went speeding around?

I don't know what a "middle ground" is in these cases. We agree that they saw what they couldn't see on account of special circumstances that occurred only on that one particular day? Or that they couldn't or didn't see it, but knew anyway that it happened? That a bus deviated significantly from its schedule and sped downtown to get Dickey to where he needed to be?

There's not a single case of my "zeroing in on the downers that agrees with what think see," since in no case did I have a particular position for them to "agree" with. If I did, then it was in the "witnesses'" favor. Example: the entire Carr inquiry was originally to evaluate a claim from someone in Dallas who, as I'd heard it, had "gone to where Carr had been" but was unable to see what Carr had supposedly seen. Where in the county courthouse did this individual go to view that perspective? Should I repeat that Carr "couldn't" see Houston Street north of Elm based solely on this individual's claim? Despite his being recognized as something of an authority on this topic, on what other basis could I have cited that?

It wasn't until I'd seen the aerial that Jack White had posted that I was even 100% certain of where the "building under construction" had been. Having seen it in the photo, and also seen the "construction stairs" near the southwest corner of the building, I could now state with reasonable certainty where Carr's supposed vantage point was ... and it happened to be on the side of what is now a blank wall with no windows. How then could that individual have "gone to where Carr was" and seen that it was "impossible" for Carr to have seen what he claimed? Short answer: it wasn't.

(In fairness to that individual, he did not make the claim of having "been there, seen that" directly to me, and I never actually heard him make that claim, but rather it is something that someone else had told me he'd done. I did not consult him on the question either.)

So, this last November, I went to Dealey Plaza and made my own first-hand observations. Since I also couldn't get onto the side of that building, the only thing I could do was to view the same line of sight from the reverse angle: if I could plainly see where Carr would have been from any of the places he claimed to have seen, then clearly, Carr might well have seen those areas from the reverse direction; here's a photograph to prove it, taken by me:

It's a bit distorted, but from the third window west of Houston on the 7th floor, you can see as far down as where the courthouse "widens" at the 9th floor and one floor below over the roof of Old Red. So you can better see which floors are which, the image below is from Google Maps "Streetview" from the intersection of Houston & Commerce:

If Carr was on the 7th floor of the new courthouse, the line of sight is questionable; if he was "seven floors above the ground," i.e., the 8th floor, it's more likely. On the 9th floor - where the foreman supposedly was - then there's no question of the 7th floor's visibility. (The sixth floor is an open question because I honored the Sixth Floor Museum's stricture against using cameras in the museum proper, but according to CD329, page 31, FBI agents went there and found that they could see the 7th floor of the TSBD, but not the "lower floors." These photos seem to concur with that observation, so you tell me if I've examined the FBI's statement as closely as I have Carr's.)

Having seen where the floors are in the image above, in this photo taken at the SE corner of the TSBD building (not in the street), you can guesstimate how many floors from the top of the new courthouse building are visible from this location:

Is it two floors, i.e., the 12th and 11th? Three (down to the 10th)? Six (all the way down to where Carr said he was on the 7th floor)? Can you see any of the courthouse wall's southwest corner where the staircase was? In case you don't recall where that was, here's an aerial in which it can be seen:

As you move northward on Houston, the new courthouse appears to recede backward as the Records Building and old county jail building seem to move forward in perspective. Here's a view from a couple of car lengths back from the corner; tell me if you think you can see where the staircase was on the 7th floor (without using your x-ray vision, that is):

It is an absolute certainty that, if the buildings block your view of someone on the 7th floor side of the new county courthouse, their view of you at this location on Elm is likewise blocked by the same buildings.

This means that nowhere on the side of the new county courthouse building on November 22 1963 would have had a vantage point of this particular location, where Carr claimed he saw a Rambler station wagon and men escaping from the TSBD. If he couldn't see this area, what conceivable difference does it make what he claimed he saw when he plainly couldn't see it?

If you think there are flaws in this reasoning, please explain them to me, or do you think it's simply a case of me "wanting to believe" those "downer" FBI agents who clearly were trying to discredit a credible "witness?"

You will also find city bus schedules among the Commission Documents, possibly CD640 if I'm remembering correctly. If you find a schedule of the route from Love Field to downtown that shows that Worrell could have witnessed both the landing of AF1 and the shooting in DP, please bring it to our attention. If there wasn't a bus that could have left Love Field after 12:47 when the plane landed, and gotten to within a few blocks of DP with enough time for Dickey to have walked (or run at top speeed) to Elm & Houston to get there even just in the nick of time, by all means, please produce it.

If Dickey couldn't have gotten from Love to Dealey in time to have witnessed both events, then what he claimed he saw is of no consequence unless you can explain how he did get from one place to the other to be able to do and see what he said he did. If you can't, but Romack and Rackley had corroborated Worrell (or Carr), then I might be more inclined to think either of them saw what they claimed, but when you can't show that Worrell could have gotten to where he said he was, and can't show that Carr could've seen what he claimed to see, then the statements of other witnesses on the ground in the area take on additional weight and are less subject to attack because you can't use Worrell or Carr's statements about what they apparently couldn't see to try to establish the verity of what the others had to say.

Incidentally, up to the time of the first shot, Dickey claimed to have been standing up against the TSBD directly under the SE windows, and looked up to see the rifle protruding from an upper window before taking off running around the corner. At the very least, he should have been visible in Altgens 6, which shows that particular area at approximately that particular moment. Dickey was about 6'1" and wore thick, black glasses. Please point him out.

If you can find him there or elsewhere, I'll concede my criticism to be in total error. I am not, however, going to go searching through myriad photos and films that show the area only to be told that it "could have been" taken after Worrell ran. If you think he was there, prove it. The evidence suggests otherwise, and I stand by what I've said.

I'll see if I can dig up that "Imaginary Witness" article which, incidentally, concludes by stating the possibility that Worrell was there (but it is only "Part One!").

Back to you.

Bernice, forgive me, but I can't make sense out of what you're saying.

I'm not going to take up two pages or more quoting lengthy "snippets" of Worrell's testimony and not coming to a conclusion about what we're supposed to be talking about, as you did in saying:

George W.Rackley Sr......You mention Worrell's poor memory in regards to time and directions.......Did you not see the same within Rackley's testimony, and yet whom you believe as one who saw no one running out of the back entrance of the TSBD.....??

I am aware you mentioned he was 60 years old...but...

He did not know the time, he did not hear the shots, he did not see the motorcade nor anything, pertaining to such, except pigeons fly off the roofs....He stood there for 5 to 10 minutes looking at the dock entrance..he says.......???.....Glued...........he did not walk closer...He was with Romack...

He says.... (followed by lengthy testimony)

... and then following up with "Now in regards to James Elbert Romack ...." What exactly was your point?

I did not mention Dickey's "poor memory," I said that his stuff made no sense. I showed in "Imaginary Witness" (which it seems as if I'll have to post here separately: I don't know what you found in DPQ, but you might want to talk to Walt about it since it's the only thing I'd submitted to him, and he did publish it. 2007? 2006? I don't remember) that Worrell could only have made it to DP from Love on the slimmest of chances. That slimness could not have given him the impression that he'd spent "an hour, hour and a half" in DP before the motorcade showed up. It wasn't even "an hour, hour and a half" from the time AF1 landed to the time JFK was killed.

Maybe you'd just have to be familiar with the geography to realize the impossibility - improbability - of what Dickey told people. It just doesn't work: He'd have had to have skedaddled from the bus stop to DP in order to even catch a glimpse of the motorcade if he'd been at Love Field when the plane landed and if he'd taken a scheduled bus as he said he did. There is absolutely no room for the perception of having spent "an hour, hour and a half" in DP before JFK showed up.

60 years old, btw, is no longer that "old" to me anymore. Still, at 50+, I recognize that there do become certain physical limitations to what one can observe and do.

Incidentally, I don't know who "Parr" is. Carr, maybe?

Duke : Another reply to you.......

I have spent the time and studied what you stated within this thread in regards to your two witnesses that gave the impression made "toast" out of Worrel's information...along with you mentioning similar in regards to Parr....at times.........first.......

Now in regards to James Elbert Romack....

First off you mention that Worrel contacted the authourities, so did Romack but not till March 1964....after a phone call from the Scecret Service.......on the previous Sat evening ,he then testified for the W/C that next week, apparently from the way it reads...

....Romack also states the article he saw in the paper had some guy running towards him, what Worrel stated was the man ran up towards the fence area, Romack was on Houston.....Worrel did not to my knowledge say anyone ran out of the back door of the TSBD and down Houston ? He stated he ran up towards the fence area.......Correct me if I am wrong......tx..

Romack says he saw a policeman run to the back of the TSBD and then leave, and he takes over on his own, watching the dock entrance....?? from Houston....As far as I know, from the photos......I have pondered over, you cannot see the dock entrance while standing on Houston.....as it was tucked away on a slant, into the right back entrance of the TSBD.......

..Romack says the DPO that headed to the back of the TSBD did not stay, he checked and he left..........but then when asked if he could see the dock entrance he says they had it block off, and he could see it as good as anyone ??

Who are they ? he also mentions two men he thought could have been FBI....that arrived around the back of the TSBD, as others also have mentioned similar showing such ID, as SS...... and yet none were within Dealey.....?? ......and he also states he could only see the dock as good as anyone ??

He only contacted the W/C after the Secret Service had contacted him on the Sat evening, before his giving testimony, in March 1964......?? After Worrell story hit the front page......????

Dickey did not personally contact the authorities; his mother did. This won't be found in any WC testimony or anything of the sort, but it's what his mother told me.

You see, Dickey was 20 years old and still a junior in high school. Mom's not real proud of that, but she loves her son. He skipped school, which he clearly wasn't doing very well with, and then told a story about how he'd witnessed the biggest thing to happen in Dallas, probably since its founding. In the midst of all the news coverage, Mom called DPD and they actually sent a car up to Farmers Branch to bring Dickey downtown to make a statement.

Darwin Payne's article appeared on the front page of the Dallas Times-Herald on March 6, 1964. This is apparently the article Romack was referring to. Check out other people's articles to this effect, including those referenced earlier: this is not an original idea of mine, even though I arrived at it independently. Romack contacted authorities after reading this article and thinking that it was so much BS, to register his dispute with the "facts" that Dickey told Darwin. Darwin, as I've said, found Dickey to be "credible." I think he merely lied well.

I will finish this with the observation about what Dickey told his Mom about his trip to Washington; you tell me if you think it is credible. It seems that, upon testifying before the WC - not merely being deposed by counsel - Earl Warren gave him, Amos Euins and Robert Jackson use of the Chief Justice's limousine for the evening, and they were thus shown around the nation's capital that evening.

Do you believe that? Seriously: do you? I will give you Mom's phone number if you wish to check the veracity of this supposed story: it's what she told me, and it's never been stated by anyone, ever, anywhere else but here and now.

And that's the kind of story he told his mother! ....

If you have reason to believe that Romack and/or Rackley were full of spit, then by all means, substantiate it here.

Duke I am thinking you need to find a couple of better witnesses than you have chosen......and not pick and choose what information in relation to them you mention, when you post, there is simply too much you left out within this thread in regards to them....and you only chose what fit your scenario against Worrell.....IMO...

...If you had studied their information that would have been very obvious....... Yet you seemingly allow these two who came forward in March 64.....as showing solid information against Worrell....or anyone that saw any person run out of the back of the TSBD.......??

........You mention in this thread how you dissected Worrell's information, I think you should have done the same with Romack and Rackley....

By all means, please provide me with those "better witnesses." I've spent many hours with Sam Pate, and Dennis Ford has apparently spoken with James Romack. There aren't any known "better witnesses," and if so, please name them.

Someone once told me the difference between a "buff" and a "researcher," that being that a buff raises questions while researchers answer them. You don't have to like what I've got to say, and you don't even have to agree with it, but you DO have to realize that I'm not "just supposin'" when I make statements like these. I have absolutely no reason to think that Romack and Rackley weren't where they said they were, and - there's no way you could know, but - I actually had originally set out to prove that Dickey Worrell was a witness just like he said.

Unfortunately, the facts didn't fit the hypothesis. Get over it or do more and better work on it than I did. No offense intended, but his sister and cousin/best friend didn't believe him either, btw. Call 'em and ask 'em. They're in the book.

If I may, I ask a question of you......Why is it, instead of putting all your effort and research to finding and proving, the possibility that there were men in the area that did escaoe, instead you continue, with great effort to down the facts that those witnesses put forth . You only appear to work on proving them wrong with the whomevers you think prove them in error. With these two that you have used as an example.....is a poor choice...and Duke, you are not accomplshing what you have hoped to......imo....

"All" of my efforts? Hardly. You've only seen the easy stuff, which are but projects in the course of a much larger effort. First, one must separate the wheat from the chaff so that all you're dealing with are actual facts. The impossible must be excluded in order to determine what the truth is. Like it or not, someone's got to do it. Consider me one of the "Roscoe White School of Fact-Finding," and then wonder why it is that James Files suddenly became the one to have been doing all that Roscoe was claimed to have been doing once it was finally determined that Roscoe couldn't have been the one who did it, and didn't even die the way it was explained by his money-grubbing son.

And if you disagree with that story, please post factual evidence rather than ad hominem rationale why the disprovers aren't to be believed or had some sort of hidden agenda, like you seem to be suggesting that I do.

Beat me up on facts, Bernice, not on mere conjecture or hyperbole.

Anyone brave enough to call?

I don't have a problem with that, but first I'd like to see what any obituary - presuming there is one - has to say before relying upon an 80-something year-old woman's fond memories. I haven't yet heard back from the UWV library if they'd found anything in the Inter Mountain News or anywhere else (that $20 fee won't be refundable, however).

Thanks, Antti. This would seemingly gibe with the data below regarding "Richard R. Carr" SSDI listing, as well as (possibly) his return(?) to Atlanta in the years between 1963 and his appearance at the Shaw trial in 1969.

... from the Social Security Death Index:

• No Richard Randolph Carrs
  
• Three Richard R. Carrs:
  • one born in 1922, died August 4, 1996 at Norton, WV, death certificate issued by the State of Georgia (SSN 259-05-1542)
    • SSN indicates issuance in Georgia
      
    • a possible hit?
      

    [*]one born in 1926, died November 13, 2004 (too late?), St. Charles, MO, issued by Missouri

    [*]other born 1941, too late to have served in WWII ...

I've contacted the Inter Mountain Newspaper at Buckhannon, WV, the closest "major" city to Norton, and they are researching for me where I might be able to find more information about the death of any Richard Carr during that timeframe in that area. The nearest library to Norton, which may have older newspapers on microfiche, is also in Buckhannon (304-472-2339) in the event anyone wants to follow up with them in the meanwhile. The Buckhannon Record Delta also suggests contacting the library, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution does not have death notices prior to 1998 (but does have contact info for death records in the various counties).

For the sake of knowing, Antti, where were you able to find Carr's enlistment data? No data regarding his membership in the Rangers, tho' that would probably occur after enlistment rather than at enlistment(?).

There is an article on mary ferrell's in the Journal Section Fourth Decade Volume 2 Issue # 5 entitled North of Elm On Houston by Dennis Ford See http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=519656

The pertinent persons covered include James Worrell, Jr., Richard Randolph Carr and also Sam Pate and James Romack, who, according to the author were also present in the area, and whose accounts refuted the accounts given by Worrell and Carr; For the most part, Ford's analysis appears to be written with a sincere desire to "get the story straight" about what was transpiring back there. Which is what we are all trying to do.......I will offer this to Duke Lane, I run across credibility issues every day, because I read declassified documents every day, and the more you read depositions, and areas that deal with literally profound issues relating to all the events of the assassination, such as the guilt or innocence of Lee Harvey Oswald, it is bedeviling when you realize that there are people who have either lied repeatedly to the various investigative agencies in matters of vital importance; or their entire testimony is suspect. I have no problem with anyone pointing out discrepancy's in a individual or individuals account of JFK Assassination matters, especially of the magnitude that a thread such as this one is dealing with, as long as it is done in an balanced and impartial manner.

Thanks for that, Robert. If one were to go back to the very start of my recent study on Carr - to the "Aerial Photos of Dealey Plaza" thread started by Jack White - they would see that I started with a question and not a conclusion. I examined what was available - and was told by knowledgeable people that Carr had "never" said that the driver of the station wagon was a "Negro" - including both testimonial evidence as well as physical, and then arrived at a conclusion.

Dennis and I would seem to have approached the problems in very much the same way, and reached the same conclusions. Our difference is in our presentation of the conclusion, and that largely to the extent that Dennis hasn't had to listen or respond to the people who want to find possible reasons why something could've been true even where it's been shown that it's not possible. His approach certainly has a lower frustration factor.

Interesting, too, that Dennis feels that the testimony given by "others present" refuted the accounts of Worrell and Carr, while Willie Weston states that "there is no testimony strong enough which could effectively refute Worrell's contention," and leaves his analysis of Carr's sworn testimony to a footnote, justifying it with a "survival instinct" for which there is no documentary proof. Best to err on the side of spectacle?

Some, I suppose, will continue to see the elephant as a tree or as a snake.

... The point I am trying to make as well as Bill, is that as a JFK Researcher you seem to focus only on concentrating on establishing that key persons were liars, misfits etc., [there is a balance you know, it's not McAdams way or the highway;] while I agree you are very good at doing that, the POINT that is being made is in reference to what ultimately do you do other than the above? That is a point I am trying to make.

In order to solve a crime, you must first consider all possibilities and provide against them. Those that can be reliably provided against should no longer be considered in the solution to the crime, for once you've excluded the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.

If I am excluding impossibilities, then I'm narrowing the focus of a proper investigation. That's a problem? Or would you prefer to think that Richard Atlee Phillips really was under arrest in Fort Worth (and that Ken Wilson doesn't really exist), or that Oswald's head really had been surgically removed prior to his exhumation autopsy? Maybe it's better that some clueless people continue to explore those dead ends, you think?

Some doors need to be closed, others need to be opened, and still others remain open. You think maybe Roscoe White and James Files and Charles Nicoletti and Mac Wallace were all shooters in Dealey Plaza, not to even mention those on the south knoll, in the sewers and drains too? Which one do you think that Ed Hoffman saw?

As to what I "ultimately" do other than sort out the chaff, that'll have to wait for a discussion offline. I will happily show and discuss material that has never seen the light of day due to its incompleteness, even after some 15 years of examination and evaluation on my part. Most of what you've seen are either snippets from that (see some of my posts in various Tippit threads), or else minor diversions I've spent some time examining and evaluating and finding easier to document than other things.

You know how to reach me. Meanwhile, casting baseless aspersions doesn't become you. The good Professor McAdams' way of thinking doesn't influence me or mine in the slightest degree, tho' I must admit to a certain amount of misplaced pride in his having taken me from being a "conspiracy theorist" to a "researcher!" (I guess that means that we conspiracy theorists can do good research. It's a pity that some people only want to acknowledge that when the research supports their own preconceived notions. Both sides of the argument are guilty of that.)

Bernice, you've made my point for me. First regarding Dickey Worrell:

What time did he say he got to Dealey Plaza after having seen the President debark from AF One?

AF One landed at approximately 11:47, as I recall. JFK arrived in Dealey Plaza at approximately 12:28-12:29. Dickey was there "an hour, an hour and a half" before that, about 11:00 a.m., about 45 minutes before the President landed, almost 2-2½ hours before Kennedy got shot by Worrell's own estimate. Yet he was also at Love Field 40 minutes before JFK was killed. Do we detect the hand of Lieutenant Commander Scott in this somewhere? Even Specter was incredulous, but Worrell wasn't going to be shaken.

You would have to read my article - I believe it's posted here on the forum somewhere - to see what the bus schedule was, which I went to incredible lengths to find and verify. In it - the first of two or three parts, the last of which haven't been completed - I gave Worrell the benefit of the doubt, concluding that it was possible that he could've gotten there ... if several variables were met, including that the driver of an earlier bus decided to hang around and watch AF1 land instead of sticking to his route, for which there is absolutely no evidence anyone did.

If not, Dickey had to wait another ten minutes after the plane landed to catch the next bus, which would not have gotten him downtown in order to get to DP by 12:30 (I think it's fair to say that we all agree that he didn't get there at any "10, 10:30, 10:45, something around there," or "an hour, hour and a half" before JFK did) even in the very best of traffic.

How exactly did he travel to DP, and how did he know to go there?

Mr. SPECTER - How did you travel from Love Field to Elm and Houston?

Mr. WORRELL - Bus. No, no; I just traveled so far on the bus. I went down to Elm, and took a bus from there. I went down as far as, I don't know where that bus stops, anyway, I got close to there and I walked the rest of the way.

He wasn't sure where he'd ended up, yet knew how to get to DP from wherever it was he might've been. Bear in mind that his mission was to get a better view of the President than he supposedly got at Love Field. The bus he took - the only one that could've gotten him anywhere near DP in any semblance of enough time for him to have met the parade there - crossed Main Street about ten minutes before the motorcade did (assuming, that is, that he was on the earlier bus), and there were crowds there. Was there any doubt in his mind that the parade was going to come by this way?

Who knows, but he apparently made a decision to stay on the bus and go wherever it might take him in hopes that he'd maybe be able to get where he wanted to go (he never explains how he knew to go to DP in the first place) and have enough time to walk or run or, who knows, maybe even get dropped off there. In sum, he passed up a sure thing to bet on an uncertainty.

His taking the earlier bus would've taken him to the end of that route with enough time to get to DP from the terminus point by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin. He didn't stand a chance on the later bus.

How did he leave Dealey Plaza?

Mr. SPECTER - All right. What did you do next, Mr. Worrell?

Mr. WORRELL - Well, I went on down this way and headed back to Elm Street.

Mr. SPECTER - Indicating you went on down to Pacific?

Mr. WORRELL - Yes.

Mr. SPECTER - And then proceeded --

Mr. WORRELL - No, no; that is wrong. I went on Pacific and --

Mr. SPECTER - Just a minute. You proceeded from point "Y" on in a generally northerly direction to Pacific and then in what direction did you go on Pacific, this would be in an easterly direction?

Mr. WORRELL - I went east.

Mr. SPECTER - You went in an easterly direction how many blocks down Pacific?

Mr. WORRELL - I went down to Market and from Market I went on Ross ....

He only went as far north as Pacific. Pacific is just one block north of Elm, and roughly coincides with the back corner of the TSBD. Without looking it up, I recall that he'd said it took him a "minute, minute and a half" or some ridiculously long time to "run" that block because, y'know, he was 20 years old and smoked. Pacific is at no point "100 yards" from the TSBD. If he was on Pacific and 100 yards away, he was east by at least 1½ blocks (you can measure it on Google Earth pretty accurately) and wouldn't have been able to see the side of the TSBD where he claimed to have seen a man run from - and run toward Elm Street - because the Dal-Tex building would've been in the way.

He clearly didn't know times, distances or much about the geography. Does anyone suppose it was because he was 20 years old and still in high school, or just as likely that he wasn't there and simply couldn't describe the area where he wasn't and the events he didn't see?

... I also have found an article.......with further information by William Weston...

You will note that another man, George Rackley was also some 100 yards away from the TSBD and yet could see the back entrance, that is not a great distance......

One of my neighbours lives approximately that distance from us, we have no problem seeing him and all.etc...when we look that way. ....

Of course, I never said that you couldn't see 100 yards to the TSBD, only that Pacific wasn't any 100 yards away from the TSBD. Worrell did say that he was "at the corner of Houston and Pacific" when he saw a man run out the side of the building, didn't he.

George "Pop" Rackley (related to Virgie?) said that he was "about a block" from the northeast (back) corner of the TSBD, but couldn't state "how many feet" that was. He also didn't know the time - it could've even been before noon, he said - and didn't hear any shots, but only that "the only suspicious thing" he saw was pigeons flying off of the building and, about 2-3 minutes later, police surrounded the TSBD. He didn't see anyone running from behind or out of the side of the building, and he was watching the area behind and beside the building "I would say 5 minutes anyhow. Probably 10. I was looking up that way at all times." He also didn't see anyone running - or presumably speeding in a car - north on Houston. He did say, however, that he could see the side and back doors of the TSBD: "I just, of course, seen the policemen all out there running back. They came out the back door and the side door with guns."

Pop was 60 years old at the time, btw.

James Elbert Romack was only 39. His testimony follow Pop's in Volume VI (Pop's on page 273, Romack's on page 277). Romack likewise could see the side and back of the building and didn't see anyone coming out, although as someone (Willie Weston?) pointed out, his attention may have been distracted momentarily when he moved the roadblocks from Houston Street so Sam Pate could get his red KBOX Pontiac station wagon onto the paved part of the road ("I watched them [stairs] all the time until someone arrived, and the only time I did take my back off, turn my back to the building was Sam Pate with his KBOX news, he arrived before any of the police or anyone").

Strange, though, that he didn't see, hear or otherwise notice (like possibly by getting run over by it?) the gray Rambler station wagon that men he didn't see come out of the TSBD jumped into and sped north past him. Neither did Sam.

He'd been standing "...it would be just about where Houston would intersect, but the street was under construction at the time. They didn't have it, which they still don't have it opened up for through traffic," standing out there with "Lee and Mr. Rackley, we walked out there together originally to start with. We were kind of piddling around, and I kind of walked off ahead of him" toward the TSBD. He also estimated being "100-125 yards" from the nearest corner of the TSBD. (Again, no big issue: I've no argument with someone being able to see that far, tho' I suspect it was a shorter distance than that.)

What's more interesting about Romack's testimony, however, is why he even came to be telling his story to the WC: he'd seen Darwin Payne's article about Worrell in the newspaper and was incensed because he didn't believe the man (Worrell) was telling the truth. Asked why he'd contacted the FBI in March, he said that it was because "I saw an article that was written by a guy, which I have been concerned about this thing all the way through, the assassination, and I got to reading it, and it is a story that just don't jibe with about me sitting there and watching the building. It just kind of upset me to know there is some monkey just hatched up such a story. ... About a guy seeing a rifle drawn in from the building above him, and he also seen the people as the shots were being fired, and he also seen some character running toward me with an overcoat on which was brown or gray or blue ...."

The article was written by Darwin Payne (who says that he recalls Worrell as being "credible," btw) and featured not only Worrell, but also Amos Euins and photographer Robert Jackson, who were all going to Washington to testify. This article was their "send-off" article, so to speak. And Worrell's story incensed Romack, whose story is fully corroborated by Pop Rackley.

Worrell's story does not corroborate Carr's at least inasmuch as Dickey didn't notice the car that would've come speeding toward him. But it doesn't matter since even Willie Weston - who is usually quick to latch onto something suspicious, concedes that:

23. This statement [of Carr's] was given to the FBI on Feb. 4,1 964. Five years later, he gave a different story at the Clay Shaw trial. The Nash Rambler was not parked on Record Street, as stated in 1964, but rather it was parked on Houston, next to the TSBD, facing north. After the shooting, two or three men came out of the Depository and got into the Rambler. The car was last seen speeding north on Houston. With some variations, this story was repeated to J. Gary Shaw in 1975 in Cover Up, (p. 13.). Unfortunately for Carr's credibility, the second version contains one significant difficulty: it is impossible to see this part of Houston Street from the new courthouse building, as the old structure would have completely blocked the view. This consideration leads us to the troubling conclusion that Carr had given a partially fictitious story at the trial. While arguably this assessment of his testimony is serious enough to warrant a complete rejection of everything he has said on the matter, I think that before we take this step, it is only fair to consider the severity of assassination-related persecution that he was suffering at the time of the trial, including at least two demonstrable attempts on his life (see Cover Up, pp. 13-14.) Given these circumstances, Carr's self-destructive credibility becomes more easily understandable as a matter of survival. When seen in this light, his early statements in 1964 actually gain in value--an account so important that the plotters of the assassination could not afford to leave it unsuppressed.

Of course, the only thing that makes "at least two" attempt on his life "demonstrable" is that someone else wrote about them.

Duke: Could you please let me know what photograph you are referring to, I have quite a few of the front of the TSBD , and very few are clear, but a couple are, and it depends exactly where he was standing, in the area......you apparently have one in particular and I would like to check it, could you post it for us....? and or let me know the photographer's name...... also could you give me, us, the full description of Worrell, many thanks...

Duke :""More telling is the fact that a photograph was taken of that area of the TSBD moments before JFK was shot, and there is, unfortunately, nobody even remotely matching Worrell's description standing in that location.""

I would if I could, Bernice, but I've never been any good at cataloging photos, mentally or otherwise. There is also a film that shows Marrion Baker running toward the TSBD which does not show anyone running from Worrell's claimed position (tho' I'd initially thought it might have).

Duke: "In an article entitled "Imaginary Witness," published in Deep Politics Quarterly (January 2007?), I dissected Worrell's purported movements vis a vis the President's arrival, the motorcade's route, the bus schedule and the shooting. In it, I determined it was possible for Worrell to have been in DP at 12:30, but only if the bus he got on at Love was running 10 minutes or more late, and he knew exactly where he wanted to go after getting off the bus (and that after having crossed through the crowds on Main Street to get there, i.e., bypassed the obvious parade route).""

This below is what Worrell stated in his W/C testimony, re Love Field and how he left Dealey, to me it somehow differs with what you have posted....above..

I'm sure it could have been off; I don't look up everything before I post it, and as often as not go from memory, which is no longer anywhere near as perfect as it never was anyway. It was close, in any case.

I also have gone through the DPQ, and cannot find your article, "Imaginary Witnesses"... Don't know what to say; I know Walt published it, complaining a bit about its length, and I'm sure I have a copy of it around here somewhere. No matter: do a keyword lookup on "Imaginary Witness" and I'm pretty sure it's here anyway.

Now that said, has it also not been the opinion of many at times on the Fs, that thre FBI lied, and altered statements, many a time...and the rest of the said Government.....? Also Penn Jones, whose work I value and respect, has also been accused of not quite printing, exactly what he was told...... It comes down to at times, it would appear, the difference in the telling of the story, is by the story teller...It is in the retelling of the beholder in otherwards... As for reference to one saying a dark complexioned man and then a negro, is only after all, a choice of words at the given time, nothing really to do with his information, as you are seeing it, in mo...

I will agree that three out of four instances of his statements are those related by others, and only one certainly directly from Carr's own mouth. Still, is it not odd that a "Negro" to both an FBI guy and Penn Jones (who specifically pointed out Carr's use of the word "Negro") becomes "a Latin" when spoken in court in the Quarter?

One of the 1964 statements, however, is quoted from a handwritten statement. I have a copy of the handwritten version, and it reads the same as the typed transcript. I certainly cannot swear that it is in Carr's handwriting or that Carr had anything to do with seeing or signing it (as opposed to it being cooked up wholly between FBI agents who decided to affix his signature to it since nobody would know what it looked like anyway), or that if he did, that he wasn't told what to write, that someone else wrote it for him and told him what to say, or anything of the sort ... but given how innocuous the information was at the outset, in 1964, there seems little enough reason for the FBI to have bothered falsifying what he'd said when all they had to do was write nothing and say they'd never heard of the man.

And then Carr sought out Penn Jones, and changed his story yet again when he got in front of Garrison. Maybe Jones was known to exaggerate or sensationalize, even wildly, but I hardly think he'd have "mis-heard" that Carr had seen the guy on the knoll behind the fence if Carr had said nothing of the sort. Do you?

The bottom line is that nobody corroborates Carr's story, and physical evidence - the placement of the buildings - disproves at least the part about the men and the car beside the TSBD. Worrell's story doesn't corroborate it, Rackley and Romack's stories refute both, and even Craig's story doesn't corroborate it beyond that both contain Ramblers of different colors.

And the bottom-bottom line is (in response to Bill Kelley's comment) is that yes, I have discredited many things that shouldn't be credited. It is as important to separate the wheat from the chaff, even if the chaff does make for a good story. If it's a bedtime story you want, don't bitch about research that doesn't reach the same happy ending as the one you heard as a child, just go on dreaming those happy dreams.

There are enough REAL questions and issues out there without chasing after wills o' the wisp and outright lies. Sorry if you don't like me popping balloons.